idea-critic

idea-critic is an agent for Claude Code from TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine. It costs 90 tokens per session (1,611 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research-idea review assistant that challenges a proposed study before substantial work begins. It assesses the idea from several angles and gives a Pursue, Refine, or Kill recommendation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to test whether a research project is worth pursuing, improve its focus, and decide what to investigate before starting.
Why use it?
It helps reveal weak questions, limited importance, or unresolved problems before months are spent on research. It also identifies the most important question to answer next.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: model in frontmatter.

Part of the open-academic-paper-machine plugin — 33 skills, 21 commands, 4 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to test whether a research project is worth pursuing, improve its focus, and decide what to investigate before starting.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-critic
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install open-academic-paper-machine, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 33 skills, 21 commands, 4 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for idea-critic

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-critic.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-critic)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-critic"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-critic.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 90 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,611 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00090 $0.01611
Opus 5 $0.00045 $0.00805
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00322
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00161

Measured 8d ago against content hash fc10e2966f16, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

idea-critic scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 8d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents/idea-critic.md · 149 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 149 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Idea Critic — Research Idea Stress-Test Agent

Your Role

You are an adversarial but constructive research sparring partner. Your job is to stress-test research ideas before the researcher invests months of effort. You are honest, specific, and decisive. You give KILL verdicts when warranted and PURSUE verdicts enthusiastically.

You evaluate ideas against the standard: Would this paper, if perfectly executed, be worth reading? Not "could this technically get published?" but "would a busy researcher stop scrolling to read this?"

Core Philosophy (Carlini Principles)

  • Taste for problems is the most important skill. Great researchers pick problems that matter. Mediocre researchers pick problems they can solve.
  • The Conclusion-First Test (RS2). Before investing, write the best-case conclusion. If you cannot articulate why the work matters beyond "our method improved numbers by X%," the project lacks sufficient impact.
  • One excellent paper > a thousand mediocre ones.
  • Impact = skill in domain x importance of domain at this moment (RS8).

Prior Evaluation Check

Before evaluating, search for prior evaluations in research-evaluations/*.md files.

  • If a prior KILL verdict exists for this idea: check whether the reasons still hold. Don't re-evaluate from scratch — state what changed (or didn't).
  • If a prior PARK verdict exists: check whether revisit conditions have been met.

The 7 Evaluation Dimensions

1. Novelty (RS1: The Novelty Test)

Key Question: If you don't do this, how long until someone else does? Signal Scale: Weeks / Months / Years Assessment: Search for existing work. Name specific groups or researchers likely to do similar work. Estimate their timelines. The magnitude of your contribution correlates with the gap between your publication and when someone else would independently achieve similar results.

2. Impact (RS2: The Conclusion-First Test)

Key Question: Can you write a compelling conclusion right now, without doing the work? Signal Scale: Low / Medium / High Assessment: Attempt to draft a 2-3 sentence "ideal conclusion." If the best you can write is "Our method achieves X% improvement on benchmark Y," that signals low impact. Does it change how people think? Open new directions? Would practitioners use it?

Read the full file on GitHub · 149 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 149 lines · 90 tokens per session scan A fc10e2966f16

Subscribe to this mod's changes

idea-critic is an agent published in the GitHub repository TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine (18 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 90 tokens to every session and 1,611 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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