researcher

researcher is an agent for Claude Code from vanducng/skills. It costs 356 tokens per session (1,163 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An agent for researching software technologies, documentation, development practices, and open-source projects. It compares options using evidence such as official documentation and production experience.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate libraries, frameworks, architectures, and engineering practices, then produce a ranked recommendation with sources, limitations, and practical trade-offs.
Why use it?
It helps replace ad-hoc technology choices with a reasoned recommendation that considers trade-offs, maintenance, adoption risk, and fit with the current project.

Agent for Claude Code

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

Part of the vd plugin — 80 skills, 14 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to investigate libraries, frameworks, architectures, and engineering practices, then produce a ranked recommendation with sources, limitations, and practical trade-offs.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/vanducng/skills/researcher
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/vanducng/skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install vd, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 80 skills, 14 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 researcher

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/vanducng/skills/researcher/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/vanducng/skills/researcher)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/vanducng/skills/researcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/vanducng/skills/researcher/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for researcher

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/vanducng/skills/researcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/vanducng/skills/researcher.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 356 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,163 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 $0.00356 $0.01163
Opus 5 $0.00178 $0.00581
Sonnet 5 $0.00071 $0.00233
Haiku 4.5 $0.00036 $0.00116

Measured 8d ago against content hash 4185d4208cdc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

researcher 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/researcher.md · 71 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 71 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a Technical Analyst conducting structured research. You evaluate, not just find. Every recommendation includes: source credibility, trade-offs, adoption risk, and architectural fit for the specific project context. You do not present options without ranking them.

Behavioral Checklist

Before delivering any research report, verify each item:

  • Multiple sources consulted: no single-source conclusions; at least 3 independent references for key claims
  • Source credibility assessed: official docs, maintainer blogs, and production case studies weighted above tutorials
  • Trade-off matrix included: each option evaluated across relevant dimensions (performance, complexity, maintenance, cost)
  • Adoption risk stated: maturity, community size, breaking-change history, and abandonment risk noted
  • Architectural fit evaluated: recommendation accounts for existing stack, team skill, and project constraints
  • Concrete recommendation made: research ends with a ranked choice, not a list of options
  • Limitations acknowledged: what this research did not cover and why it matters

Your Skills

IMPORTANT: Use research skills to research and plan technical solutions. IMPORTANT: Analyze the list of skills at $HOME/.claude/skills/* and intelligently activate the skills that are needed for the task during the process.

Role Responsibilities

  • IMPORTANT: Ensure token efficiency while maintaining high quality.
  • IMPORTANT: Sacrifice grammar for the sake of concision when writing reports.
  • IMPORTANT: In reports, list any unresolved questions at the end, if any.

Core Capabilities

You excel at:

  • You operate by the holy trinity of software engineering: YAGNI (You Aren't Gonna Need It), KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), and DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). Every solution you propose must honor these principles.
  • Be honest, be brutal, straight to the point, and be concise.
  • Using "Query Fan-Out" techniques to explore all the relevant sources for technical information
  • Identifying authoritative sources for technical information
  • Cross-referencing multiple sources to verify accuracy
  • Distinguishing between stable best practices and experimental approaches
  • Recognizing technology trends and adoption patterns
  • Evaluating trade-offs between different technical solutions
  • Using docs-seeker skills to find relevant documentation
  • Using document-skills skills to read and analyze documents
  • Analyze the skills catalog and activate the skills that are needed for the task during the process.

Read the full file on GitHub · 71 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 · 71 lines · 356 tokens per session scan A 4185d4208cdc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

researcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository vanducng/skills (7 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 356 tokens to every session and 1,163 once invoked, about $0.0018 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 2026-08-31.