alterlab-metabolomics-wb

alterlab-metabolomics-wb is a skill for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 89 tokens per session (2,958 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of metabolomics-workbench-database, MIT.

A tool for querying the NIH Metabolomics Workbench, a public research database of studies measuring small molecules in biological samples. It also supports standard metabolite names, mass searches, and study metadata through the database API.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps retrieve metabolomics studies, look up metabolites by mass-to-charge ratio, standardize names with RefMet, and inspect MS, NMR, and study data.
Why use it?
It avoids manually searching the website and handles response formats and redirects that can otherwise make API use error-prone.

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 helps retrieve metabolomics studies, look up metabolites by mass-to-charge ratio, standardize names with RefMet, and inspect MS, NMR, and study data.

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

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-metabolomics-wb"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-metabolomics-wb.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 2,958 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 86% 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 $0.00089 $0.02958
Opus 5 $0.00044 $0.01479
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00592
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00296

Measured 7d ago against content hash 3952e0105dac, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-metabolomics-wb 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 7d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/query_metabolomics_wb.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

86% identical to metabolomics-workbench-database — 42 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-metabolomics-wb/SKILL.md · 281 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 281 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Metabolomics Workbench Database

Overview

The Metabolomics Workbench is a comprehensive NIH Common Fund-sponsored platform hosted at UCSD that serves as the primary repository for metabolomics research data. It provides programmatic access to several thousand processed studies (4,300+ publicly available via the REST API as of 2026-06), standardized metabolite nomenclature through RefMet, and powerful search capabilities across multiple analytical platforms (GC-MS, LC-MS, NMR).

API gotchas (verified 2026-06)

Read these before parsing responses — several behaviors contradict the naive "/json always returns JSON" assumption:

  • /json is not always JSON. The moverz context and the study summary/search outputs return tab-delimited text even when you ask for /json. The scripts/query_metabolomics_wb.py helper wraps such bodies as {"raw": "<tsv>"} rather than failing. Parse the TSV; do not assume keyed JSON objects.
  • moverz issues a 302 redirect to an internal .php handler. urllib/requests follow redirects automatically; raw curl does not unless you pass -L (otherwise you get an empty body).
  • List available studies with /txt, not /json. study/study_id/ST/available/json returns an empty body; use study/study_id/ST/available/txt (columns: project_id, study_id, analysis_id).
  • refmet/match returns the field refmet_name (plus formula, exactmass, classes, refmet_id) — not name.
  • Study search by refmet_name uses the indexed RefMet name, which may differ from refmet/match output (e.g. match/citrate gives Citric acid, but the study index is keyed on Tyrosine-style entries). Verify the name resolves to studies; an empty result usually means a name-index mismatch, not "no studies."

Scripts

scripts/query_metabolomics_wb.py — query the Metabolomics Workbench REST API (stdlib only, JSON to stdout):

python scripts/query_metabolomics_wb.py refmet citrate          # standardize a name (RefMet)
python scripts/query_metabolomics_wb.py study ST000001          # study summary
python scripts/query_metabolomics_wb.py moverz 635.52 --adduct M+H   # m/z search

Read the full file on GitHub · 281 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. 7d ago First seen · 281 lines · 89 tokens per session scan A 3952e0105dac

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-metabolomics-wb is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 89 tokens to every session and 2,958 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 86% identical to metabolomics-workbench-database, differing in 42 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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