windsurf-deep-research

windsurf-deep-research is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from 85danf/agent-skills. It costs 40 tokens per session (1,696 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured teaching skill for learning about, understanding, evaluating, or comparing technologies, tools, frameworks, concepts, and methods.

In plain words
What is it for?
Getting a quick overview, a standard study guide, or a deeper research document about one topic or a comparison of several items.
Why use it?
It turns a broad learning request into a guided explanation that starts with the main idea and can go deeper as needed.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Getting a quick overview, a standard study guide, or a deeper research document about one topic or a comparison of several items.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/85danf/agent-skills/windsurf-deep-research
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.

Any agent
npx skills add 85danf/agent-skills --skill windsurf-deep-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/85danf/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 windsurf-deep-research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/85danf/agent-skills/windsurf-deep-research/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/85danf/agent-skills/windsurf-deep-research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/85danf/agent-skills/windsurf-deep-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/85danf/agent-skills/windsurf-deep-research/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 windsurf-deep-research

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/85danf/agent-skills/windsurf-deep-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/85danf/agent-skills/windsurf-deep-research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,696 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 $0.00040 $0.01696
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00848
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00339
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00170

Measured 8d ago against content hash 26eac2128060, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

windsurf-deep-research 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.

windsurf/skills/windsurf-deep-research/SKILL.md · 179 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 179 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Deep Research

Structured teaching flow: gist, informed questions, research, progressive explanation.

Overview

Teach any topic through progressive disclosure. Deliver value immediately with a preliminary gist, then deepen research based on user needs.

Two modes: Single topic (default) or Comparison (when 2+ items detected).

Three depth tiers:

Tier Phases Research Tracks Deliverable
Quick 0-1-2 0 Conversational gist
Standard 0-1-2-3-4-5+QA 4 Gist + study guide
Deep All phases + QA 5-6 + review Gist + comprehensive doc

Skill Directory

Supporting files are in the same directory as this SKILL.md. They are not auto-loaded — read them explicitly and only when needed (progressive disclosure) to avoid context bloat. Use absolute paths with Cascade's read_file tool.

  • agents/ — Research guides for each research track.
  • reference/ — Search strategies, teaching tone, analysis tools (read only when needed).
  • templates/ — Output document templates (read when composing final output).

Phase 0: Topic Input

Parse topic from the user’s request. If invoked via @deep-research, treat the remaining text as the topic.

  • No topic provided: ask for one.
  • Comparison detected ("vs", "versus", "compared to", "or" between named items, 2+ items listed): confirm comparison mode.

Phase 1: Preliminary Assessment & Gist

Runs BEFORE asking any clarification questions.

  1. Run 1-2 web searches for a current overview of the topic using Cascade's search_web tool. Read the top results with read_url_content to ground the gist.
  2. Deliver gist conversationally to the user:
    • What it is — 2-3 sentences
    • Why it matters — the problem it solves
    • Where it fits — ecosystem context
    • Mental model — one-liner analogy ("Think of it as...")
  3. Internally note key dimensions for Phase 2:
    • Main subtopics/areas
    • Recent developments or controversies
    • Common use cases
    • Related/competing technologies

Read the full file on GitHub · 179 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 · 179 lines · 40 tokens per session scan A 26eac2128060

Subscribe to this mod's changes

windsurf-deep-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository 85danf/agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 1,696 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

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