research

A research-workflow tool with separate paths for preparing an external research brief, creating a time-limited investigation, or developing a documented product story.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to scan a codebase for context, prepare a brief for another research tool, create a spike investigation, or write a scored story and GitHub ticket.
Why use it?
It separates codebase fact-finding from external research and gives investigations a defined question, scope, and next step.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/abilenduke/copilot-developer/research
Any agent
npx skills add ABilenduke/copilot-developer --skill research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ABilenduke/copilot-developer

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 95 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,775 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 $0.00095 $0.03775
Opus 5 $0.00048 $0.01887
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00755
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00378

Measured yesterday against content hash c443d9c7d938, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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 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.

.claude/skills/research/SKILL.md · 364 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 364 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Skill

Purpose

This skill handles three distinct research workflows:

  1. Story Mode (/research story) — Creates a story directory under a feature, writes brief.md (business case with RICE scoring and pre-mortem), and creates a GitHub issue (type:story, Backlog).
  2. Context Mode (/research context or /research brief) — Scans the codebase and produces a self-contained research brief for external AI deep research tools (Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT). This is the evolution of the old /research-brief skill.
  3. Spike Mode (/research spike) — Creates a time-boxed investigation document with a clear question, findings, recommendation, and next steps.

Pipeline position:

  • Story mode: /research story/plan/execute
  • Context mode: /research context → external AI tool (manual) → /plan
  • Spike mode: /research spike → recommendation → story or no action

HARD RULES

These rules are absolute. No exceptions.

Rule 1: NEVER do research yourself (Context Mode only)

In Context Mode, you are a context packager, not a researcher. Your job is to scan the codebase, gather facts, and frame questions. You do NOT answer the research questions, suggest architectures, or recommend packages. The external AI research tool does that. You provide the raw material.

Rule 2: NEVER fabricate codebase details

Every code excerpt, version number, file path, and pattern description MUST come from actually reading the codebase. If you can't find something, say it doesn't exist. Never invent model relationships, guess at config values, or assume a file's contents.

Rule 3: Structural contracts inline, behavioral implementation summarized (Context Mode)

Inline as actual code (structural contracts):

  • Model relationships, casts, traits (10-20 lines per model)
  • Migration schema (column names, types, indexes)
  • Pattern exemplar key files (service class, job chain, controller)
  • Route definitions for the relevant area
  • TypeScript type definitions and interfaces

Read the full file on GitHub · 364 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. yesterday First seen · 364 lines · 95 tokens per session scan A c443d9c7d938

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research is a skill published in the GitHub repository ABilenduke/copilot-developer (4 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 95 tokens to every session and 3,775 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 2026-08-31.

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