alterlab-hmdb

alterlab-hmdb is a skill for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 89 tokens per session (1,944 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research skill for querying the Human Metabolome Database, a reference database of small molecules found in the human body. It can look up metabolites by name, database ID, or chemical structure and retrieve properties, biomarkers, spectra, and pathways.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for metabolomics research, clinical chemistry, biomarker discovery, metabolite identification, and matching NMR or MS reference spectra.
Why use it?
It brings relevant chemical and biological reference information together when identifying a metabolite or investigating its role in health and disease.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

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

Good fit Use it for metabolomics research, clinical chemistry, biomarker discovery, metabolite identification, and matching NMR or MS reference spectra.

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

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-hmdb"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-hmdb.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 89 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,944 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 $0.00089 $0.01944
Opus 5 $0.00044 $0.00972
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00389
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00194

Measured 5d ago against content hash d701e7f608b3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-hmdb 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 5d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/query_hmdb.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-hmdb/SKILL.md · 203 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 203 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

HMDB Database

Overview

The Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) is a comprehensive, freely available resource containing detailed information about small molecule metabolites found in the human body.

Scripts

scripts/query_hmdb.py — fetch and parse an HMDB metabolite XML record by accession (stdlib only, JSON to stdout):

python scripts/query_hmdb.py HMDB0000001    # full accession
python scripts/query_hmdb.py 1              # bare number (zero-padded automatically)

Note: HMDB serves no public REST API and may rate-limit/block automated fetches; for bulk work download the XML/SDF dumps from https://www.hmdb.ca/downloads.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be used when performing metabolomics research, clinical chemistry, biomarker discovery, or metabolite identification tasks.

Database Contents

HMDB version 5.0 (released 2022; latest major version as of mid-2026) contains:

  • 220,945 metabolite entries covering both water-soluble and lipid-soluble compounds (the v5.0 paper reported 217,920; the live site count grows with curation)
  • ~8,600 protein sequences for enzymes and transporters involved in metabolism
  • 130+ data fields per metabolite including:
    • Chemical properties (structure, formula, molecular weight, InChI, SMILES)
    • Clinical data (biomarker associations, diseases, normal/abnormal concentrations)
    • Biological information (pathways, reactions, locations)
    • Spectroscopic data (NMR, MS, MS-MS spectra)
    • External database links (KEGG, PubChem, MetaCyc, ChEBI, PDB, UniProt, GenBank)

Core Capabilities

1. Web-Based Metabolite Searches

Access HMDB through the web interface at https://www.hmdb.ca/ for:

Text Searches:

  • Search by metabolite name, synonym, or identifier (HMDB ID)
  • Example HMDB IDs: HMDB0000001, HMDB0001234
  • Search by disease associations or pathway involvement
  • Query by biological specimen type (urine, serum, CSF, saliva, feces, sweat)

Structure-Based Searches:

  • Use ChemQuery for structure and substructure searches
  • Search by molecular weight or molecular weight range
  • Use SMILES or InChI strings to find compounds

Read the full file on GitHub · 203 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. 5d ago First seen · 203 lines · 89 tokens per session scan A d701e7f608b3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-hmdb is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 89 tokens to every session and 1,944 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 2026-09-05.

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