research-software-engineering

research-software-engineering is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from a-attia/scicomp-research-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (4,061 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of working rules for software that uses code to produce scientific results, such as numerical models, simulations, or machine-learning experiments.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps when writing or extending numerical methods, partial-differential-equation solvers, inverse problems, optimal experimental design, uncertainty analysis, or scientific machine learning.
Why use it?
Scientific code can give plausible-looking numbers even when something is wrong. These rules help guide careful development and review of code in Python, Julia, C++, and other languages.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions AGENTS.md; mentions OpenCode.

Good fit It helps when writing or extending numerical methods, partial-differential-equation solvers, inverse problems, optimal experimental design, uncertainty analysis, or scientific machine learning.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/a-attia/scicomp-research-skills/research-software-engineering
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 a-attia/scicomp-research-skills --skill research-software-engineering
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/a-attia/scicomp-research-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 research-software-engineering

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/a-attia/scicomp-research-skills/research-software-engineering/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/a-attia/scicomp-research-skills/research-software-engineering)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/a-attia/scicomp-research-skills/research-software-engineering"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/a-attia/scicomp-research-skills/research-software-engineering/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 research-software-engineering

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/a-attia/scicomp-research-skills/research-software-engineering"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/a-attia/scicomp-research-skills/research-software-engineering.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,061 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 $0.00000 $0.04061
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.02031
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00812
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00406

Measured 11d ago against content hash c42b7ebad417, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-software-engineering 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 11d 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.

skills/research-software-engineering/SKILL.md · 312 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 312 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Software Engineering

How this skill is organised (progressive disclosure)

This skill follows the three-level progressive disclosure pattern also used by agent-resource-discipline and codified by Anthropic's skill-creator:

  • Level 1 (always in context once loaded): this SKILL.md, ~200 lines. Contains the universal principles + a workflow table showing which reference to load for which task.
  • Level 2 (loaded on demand by name): the references/*.md files -- one per discipline. Loaded only when a session actually exercises that discipline.
  • Level 3 (planned future work): numerical-correctness enforcement hooks (golden-output-diff guard, lockfile-drift guard, experiment-id guard, commit-pin guard) -- specification deferred, same rationale as agent-resource-discipline's planned hooks.

Always load this SKILL.md when the trigger fires. Load specific references only when the current sub-task requires them.

When to load this skill

Load this skill at the start of any session that will involve any of:

  • writing or extending a scientific-computing library or research code (numerical methods, PDE solvers, inverse problems, OED, UQ, scientific ML);
  • adding tests to numerical code;
  • packaging / releasing research code (pyproject.toml, GitHub Actions, Zenodo);
  • preparing code for a paper submission (commit-pinning, archiving);
  • auditing existing scientific software for correctness, reproducibility, or maintainability concerns;
  • API design decisions for a Pythonic / JAX / dolfinx / petsc4py scientific library;
  • performance tuning, GPU offload, MPI parallelisation;
  • extracting a reusable library out of experiment scripts.

If the session is a paper-writing session that does NOT touch code, load research-paper-writing instead. If the session is mixed (paper + code), load both.

Core principle: numerical correctness is not optional

A scientific-computing program that returns a plausible-looking wrong number is much worse than one that crashes. The agent MUST treat numerical correctness as the highest-priority concern, ahead of performance, ahead of API ergonomics, ahead of style. Specifically:

Read the full file on GitHub · 312 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 11d ago First seen · 312 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A c42b7ebad417

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-software-engineering is a skill published in the GitHub repository a-attia/scicomp-research-skills (11 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 4,061 tokens. 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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