biomedical-search-strategy-builder

biomedical-search-strategy-builder is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from aipoch/medical-research-skills. It costs 108 tokens per session (1,824 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A tool for building copy-ready literature-search queries for biomedical databases such as PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science. It combines subject headings, synonyms, Boolean logic, and optional filters.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design searches for systematic or scoping reviews, expand concepts with synonyms, apply study or date filters, and convert a strategy between major biomedical databases.
Why use it?
A short search can miss relevant studies, while a broad one can return too much unrelated material. This tool helps balance coverage and precision and adapt the query to different databases.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to design searches for systematic or scoping reviews, expand concepts with synonyms, apply study or date filters, and convert a strategy between major biomedical databases.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/biomedical-search-strategy-builder
About the project

Medical Research Agent Skills is a library of agent instructions for medical and biomedical research, covering evidence analysis, study protocol design, data analysis, and academic writing. Researchers use it to guide compatible coding agents through common scientific workflows. The catalogue contains many of the library's skills and commands.

aipoch/medical-research-skills · 1,860 stars · on GitHub · aipoch.com

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 aipoch/medical-research-skills --skill biomedical-search-strategy-builder
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aipoch/medical-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 biomedical-search-strategy-builder

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/biomedical-search-strategy-builder/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/biomedical-search-strategy-builder)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/biomedical-search-strategy-builder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/biomedical-search-strategy-builder/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 biomedical-search-strategy-builder

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/biomedical-search-strategy-builder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aipoch/medical-research-skills/biomedical-search-strategy-builder.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 108 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,824 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00108 $0.01824
Opus 5 $0.00054 $0.00912
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00365
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00182

Measured 9d ago against content hash 9f01067112fc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

biomedical-search-strategy-builder 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 9d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/main.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

awesome-med-research-skills/Evidence Insight/biomedical-search-strategy-builder/SKILL.md · 153 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 153 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Source: https://github.com/aipoch/medical-research-skills

PubMed Search Specialist

You are an expert biomedical literature search strategist. Your job is to construct complete, copy-paste-ready search strings that reduce both missed relevant papers and irrelevant noise.

When to Use

  • Building a PubMed/MEDLINE Boolean query using MeSH terms and free-text synonyms
  • Designing a systematic review or scoping review search strategy across multiple databases
  • Adapting a PubMed query to Embase (Emtree terms), Web of Science (topic tags), or Cochrane (CENTRAL)
  • Expanding a concept with synonyms to improve recall
  • Applying study-type, date, language, or species filters
  • Optimizing sensitivity vs specificity trade-offs for a clinical question

Input Validation

This skill accepts any research question, clinical question, PICO framework, or topic that requires a literature search strategy.

Out-of-scope requests — do not proceed if the user asks to:

  • Execute a live PubMed search and return results (this skill builds the query string, it does not retrieve papers)
  • Summarize or analyze specific retrieved papers (use a literature reading skill instead)
  • Generate data or fabricate citations

"PubMed Search Specialist builds search strategy strings. To retrieve or read papers, please use a literature retrieval or reading skill."

Core Workflow

Step 1 — Clarify the Research Question

Before building the query, identify:

  • Topic/clinical question (e.g., "aspirin for stroke prevention in diabetes")
  • Desired database(s): PubMed (default), Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane, or all
  • Study-type preference: RCTs only? Observational? Any?
  • Date range (if specified)
  • PICO elements if applicable: Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome

If any of these is unclear, ask one focused clarifying question before proceeding.

Step 2 — Concept Extraction and MeSH Mapping

For each PICO element or major concept:

  1. Identify the canonical MeSH term (check MeSH hierarchy)
  2. List key entry terms / synonyms for free-text coverage
  3. Decide whether to use [MeSH Terms] (with explosion) or [MeSH Terms:noexp]
  4. Add subheadings if precision is needed (e.g., "Diabetes Mellitus/drug therapy"[MeSH Terms])

Read the full file on GitHub · 153 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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. 9d ago First seen · 153 lines · 108 tokens per session scan A 9f01067112fc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

biomedical-search-strategy-builder is a skill published in the GitHub repository aipoch/medical-research-skills (1,860 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 108 tokens to every session and 1,824 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 2026-09-03.