alterlab-gene-db

alterlab-gene-db is a skill for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 85 tokens per session (1,629 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A database lookup tool for NCBI Gene, a public catalogue of genes and their biological information. It can find genes by symbol or ID and return sequences, locations, functions, and related traits.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for annotating gene lists, retrieving gene details, finding sequences, and performing batch lookups.
Why use it?
It removes the need to search several gene resources manually or resolve gene names and IDs one at a time.

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 annotating gene lists, retrieving gene details, finding sequences, and performing batch lookups.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-gene-db
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-gene-db
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-gene-db

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-gene-db"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-gene-db.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 85 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,629 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. 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 $0.00085 $0.01629
Opus 5 $0.00043 $0.00814
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00326
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00163

Measured 8d ago against content hash 0463bfb7b742, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-gene-db 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 8d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/batch_gene_lookup.py, scripts/fetch_gene_data.py, scripts/query_gene.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:*)
skills/databases/alterlab-gene-db/SKILL.md · 184 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 184 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Gene Database

Overview

NCBI Gene is a comprehensive database integrating gene information from diverse species. It provides nomenclature, reference sequences (RefSeqs), chromosomal maps, biological pathways, genetic variations, phenotypes, and cross-references to global genomic resources.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be used when working with gene data including searching by gene symbol or ID, retrieving gene sequences and metadata, analyzing gene functions and pathways, or performing batch gene lookups.

Quick Start

NCBI provides two main APIs for gene data access:

  1. E-utilities (Traditional): Full-featured API for all Entrez databases with flexible querying
  2. NCBI Datasets API (Newer): Optimized for gene data retrieval with simplified workflows

Choose E-utilities for complex queries and cross-database searches. Choose the Datasets API for straightforward gene metadata retrieval (one gene report per request; transcript/protein RefSeq accessions come from the separate product_report endpoint).

Common Workflows

Search Genes by Symbol or Name

To search for genes by symbol or name across organisms:

  1. Use the scripts/query_gene.py script with E-utilities ESearch
  2. Specify the gene symbol and organism (e.g., "BRCA1 in human")
  3. The script returns matching Gene IDs

Example query patterns:

  • Gene symbol: insulin[gene name] AND human[organism]
  • Gene with disease: dystrophin[gene name] AND muscular dystrophy[disease]
  • Chromosome location: human[organism] AND 17q21[chromosome]

Retrieve Gene Information by ID

To fetch detailed information for known Gene IDs:

  1. Use scripts/fetch_gene_data.py with the Datasets API for comprehensive data
  2. Alternatively, use scripts/query_gene.py with E-utilities EFetch for specific formats
  3. Specify desired output format (JSON, XML, or text)

The Datasets API gene report returns:

  • Gene nomenclature, aliases, and cross-references (HGNC, Ensembl, UniProt/Swiss-Prot, OMIM)
  • Genomic location and assembly mapping (per assembly, e.g. GRCh38 and T2T-CHM13)
  • Gene Ontology (GO) annotations
  • Transcript and protein counts

Read the full file on GitHub · 184 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 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. 8d ago First seen · 184 lines · 85 tokens per session scan A 0463bfb7b742

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-gene-db is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 85 tokens to every session and 1,629 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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