research-methodology

A guide for researching a question, finding sources, checking their reliability, and combining the evidence.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to define research scope, survey a topic, verify claims, compare sources, track citations, and note limitations.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of relying on outdated, incomplete, unsupported, or biased information.

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/aigentive/ralphx/research-methodology
Any agent
npx skills add aigentive/RalphX --skill research-methodology
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aigentive/RalphX

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 9 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 519 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 $0.00009 $0.00519
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00260
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00104
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00052

Measured 2d ago against content hash 4432564d8cef, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-methodology 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 2d 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.

plugins/app/skills/research-methodology/SKILL.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Methodology

Research Process

1. Scope Definition

  • Define the research question
  • Set boundaries (what's included/excluded)
  • Identify success criteria
  • Estimate depth needed

2. Survey Phase

  • Broad exploration of the topic
  • Identify key sources
  • Map the landscape
  • Note promising areas

3. Deep Dive

  • Focus on key areas
  • Read primary sources
  • Collect evidence
  • Track citations

4. Verification

  • Cross-reference claims
  • Check for contradictions
  • Verify source credibility
  • Note confidence levels

5. Synthesis

  • Connect findings
  • Identify patterns
  • Draw conclusions
  • Acknowledge limitations

Source Evaluation

Credibility Criteria

  • Authority: Who created this?
  • Accuracy: Is it verifiable?
  • Currency: How recent?
  • Coverage: How complete?
  • Bias: What perspective?

Source Hierarchy

  1. Primary sources (original work)
  2. Peer-reviewed research
  3. Official documentation
  4. Expert analysis
  5. Community consensus

Red Flags

  • No author attribution
  • No date or very old
  • Broken citations
  • Sensational language
  • Single source claims

Citation Format

[1] Author Name. "Title." Source, Date. URL

Example:

[1] Mozilla. "JavaScript Guide." MDN Web Docs, 2024.
    https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide

Confidence Levels

Level Meaning Evidence Required
High Strongly supported Multiple primary sources
Medium Well supported Credible sources agree
Low Tentative Limited or conflicting
Uncertain Needs more research Insufficient evidence

Output Template

## Executive Summary
[1-3 sentences of key findings]

## Research Question
[What was investigated]

## Methodology
[How research was conducted]

## Findings
### [Topic 1]
[Findings with [N] citations]

### [Topic 2]
...

## Sources
[Numbered list with full citations]

## Limitations
[What wasn't covered, caveats]

## Recommendations
[Next steps, actionable insights]

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 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. 2d ago First seen · 114 lines · 9 tokens per session scan A 4432564d8cef

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-methodology is a skill published in the GitHub repository aigentive/RalphX (5 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 9 tokens to every session and 519 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 2026-08-31.

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