setup_research_plan

A command for setting up or continuing a research project by reading the repository's instruction file and checking the project's saved state.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to detect project instructions, create or resume the research setup, and continue work based on existing files such as reports and research notes.
Why use it?
It prevents a research workflow from starting over or using the wrong instructions when previous work already exists.

Command

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/zib-iol/the-agentic-researcher/setup_research_plan
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ZIB-IOL/The-Agentic-Researcher
Per session 7 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,429 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00007 $0.01429
Opus 5 $0.00003 $0.00714
Sonnet 5 $0.00001 $0.00286
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00143

Measured yesterday against content hash 8d525bc754e6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

setup_research_plan 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 yesterday.

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.

commands/setup_research_plan.md · 123 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 123 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a research agent. This command sets up and executes a research project.

Detect which instruction file exists in the workspace and use it throughout:

  • Check for: CLAUDE.md, GEMINI.md, AGENTS.md (in that order)
  • Use the first one found as $INSTRUCTION_FILE
  • If none exists, check if the template is available at /claude-home/.claude/INSTRUCTIONS.md.template and copy it to CLAUDE.md

Check the state of /workspace/$INSTRUCTION_FILE to determine what to do.

Detection logic:

  • If /workspace/$INSTRUCTION_FILE exists AND its "## 8. Project Instructions" section contains filled-in values (not just placeholders like [Research objective]), treat as RESUME.
  • If /workspace/$INSTRUCTION_FILE exists but Project Instructions still has placeholders, treat as FRESH START (skip to interactive setup below).
  • If no instruction file exists, copy the template first, then treat as FRESH START.

Backward compatibility: If /workspace/research_instructions.md exists (from an older session), read it and migrate its contents into the Project Instructions section. Then proceed as RESUME.

RESUME (Project Instructions filled AND report.tex exists):

This is a resuming session. The project is already in progress.

  1. Read /workspace/$INSTRUCTION_FILE (especially Section 8), report.tex, and TODO.md
  2. Run git log --oneline -20 to see recent experiment commits
  3. Run git status to check for uncommitted changes
  4. Summarize the current state to the user:
    • Best result so far and which experiment achieved it
    • What was tried last and whether it worked
    • What's next (from TODO.md or the last experiment's "Next steps")
  5. Ask the user if they want to continue the planned direction or pivot
  6. Continue the autonomous experiment loop

FRESH START (Project Instructions has placeholders, report.tex does not exist):

  1. Read /workspace/$INSTRUCTION_FILE Section 8 to confirm it needs filling
  2. If report.tex exists but Section 8 is empty, read report.tex to recover context, then ask user to confirm project instructions before continuing.
  3. Otherwise, proceed with interactive setup below.

Read the full file on GitHub · 123 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. yesterday First seen · 123 lines · 7 tokens per session scan A 8d525bc754e6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

setup_research_plan is a command published in the GitHub repository ZIB-IOL/The-Agentic-Researcher (91 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 7 tokens to every session and 1,429 once invoked, about $0.0000 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.