alterlab-ena

alterlab-ena is a skill for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 83 tokens per session (1,818 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of ena-database, MIT.

A data-access tool for the European Nucleotide Archive, a public repository of DNA and RNA sequence data. It retrieves sequences, raw sequencing files, genome assemblies, sample records, and annotations.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for fetching study or sample data by accession, downloading sequencing reads or assemblies, searching metadata, and feeding nucleotide data into bioinformatics workflows.
Why use it?
It simplifies finding and downloading biological sequence data for analysis, including large datasets and raw FASTQ files.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the alterlab-databases plugin — 39 skills shipped together

Good fit It is for fetching study or sample data by accession, downloading sequencing reads or assemblies, searching metadata, and feeding nucleotide data into bioinformatics workflows.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-ena
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 AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills --skill alterlab-ena
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install alterlab-databases, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 39 skills.

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 alterlab-ena

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-ena/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-ena)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-ena"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-ena/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 alterlab-ena

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-ena"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-ena.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 83 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,818 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin 89% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00083 $0.01818
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.00909
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00364
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00182

Measured 9d ago against content hash 451e386ce39b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-ena scanned grade A with 1 finding 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/query_ena.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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

allowed-tools: Read WebFetch Bash(curl:*) Bash(python:*)
Origin

This is a copy

89% identical to ena-database — 32 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/databases/alterlab-ena/SKILL.md · 220 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 220 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

ENA Database

Overview

The European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) is a comprehensive public repository for nucleotide sequence data and associated metadata. Access and query DNA/RNA sequences, raw reads, genome assemblies, and functional annotations through REST APIs and FTP for genomics and bioinformatics pipelines.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be used when:

  • Retrieving nucleotide sequences or raw sequencing reads by accession
  • Searching for samples, studies, or assemblies by metadata criteria
  • Downloading FASTQ files or genome assemblies for analysis
  • Querying taxonomic information for organisms
  • Accessing sequence annotations and functional data
  • Integrating ENA data into bioinformatics pipelines
  • Performing cross-reference searches to related databases
  • Bulk downloading datasets via FTP or Aspera

Core Capabilities

1. Data Types and Structure

ENA organizes data into hierarchical object types:

Studies/Projects - Group related data and control release dates. Studies are the primary unit for citing archived data.

Samples - Represent units of biomaterial from which sequencing libraries were produced. Samples must be registered before submitting most data types.

Raw Reads - Consist of:

  • Experiments: Metadata about sequencing methods, library preparation, and instrument details
  • Runs: References to data files containing raw sequencing reads from a single sequencing run

Assemblies - Genome, transcriptome, metagenome, or metatranscriptome assemblies at various completion levels.

Sequences - Assembled and annotated sequences stored in the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database, including coding/non-coding regions and functional annotations.

Analyses - Results from computational analyses of sequence data.

Taxonomy Records - Taxonomic information including lineage and rank.

2. Programmatic Access

ENA provides multiple REST APIs for data access. Consult references/api_reference.md for detailed endpoint documentation.

Read the full file on GitHub · 220 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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 · 220 lines · 83 tokens per session scan A 451e386ce39b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-ena is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 83 tokens to every session and 1,818 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). It is 89% identical to ena-database, differing in 32 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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