alterlab-phylogenetics

alterlab-phylogenetics is a skill for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 152 tokens per session (4,133 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for building a phylogenetic tree, which is a diagram showing likely evolutionary relationships among biological sequences. It aligns DNA or protein sequences, optionally trims unreliable sections, infers a tree, checks support with bootstraps, and creates visualizations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to compare sequences in FASTA files, reconstruct evolutionary history, analyze large sequence collections, and view or edit the resulting trees.
Why use it?
It organizes several standard sequence-analysis steps into one process instead of requiring separate tools and manual handoffs.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the alterlab-bioinformatics plugin — 38 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to compare sequences in FASTA files, reconstruct evolutionary history, analyze large sequence collections, and view or edit the resulting trees.

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

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install alterlab-bioinformatics, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 38 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-phylogenetics

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-phylogenetics"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-phylogenetics.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 152 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,133 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 $0.00152 $0.04133
Opus 5 $0.00076 $0.02067
Sonnet 5 $0.00030 $0.00827
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00413

Measured 11d ago against content hash c3ba902acd49, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-phylogenetics 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 11d ago.

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

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

result = subprocess.run(cmd, stdout=out, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, text=True)
skills/bioinformatics/alterlab-phylogenetics/SKILL.md · 414 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 414 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Phylogenetics

Overview

Phylogenetic analysis reconstructs the evolutionary history of biological sequences (genes, proteins, genomes) by inferring the branching pattern of descent. This skill covers the standard pipeline:

  1. MAFFT — Multiple sequence alignment
  2. IQ-TREE 2 — Maximum likelihood tree inference with model selection
  3. FastTree — Fast approximate maximum likelihood (for large datasets)
  4. ETE3 — Python library for tree manipulation and visualization

Installation: The aligners and tree builders are compiled CLI tools (not on PyPI). Install the binaries via bioconda or Homebrew; install the Python visualization layer with uv.

# CLI binaries — bioconda (cross-platform) ...
conda install -c bioconda mafft iqtree fasttree trimal
# ... or Homebrew on macOS (Apple Silicon): IQ-TREE/TrimAl live in the brewsci/bio tap
brew install mafft fasttree
brew tap brewsci/bio && brew install brewsci/bio/iqtree brewsci/bio/trimal  # iqtree formula ships the iqtree2 binary

# Python visualization layer
uv pip install "ete3==3.1.3"   # also needs numpy<2 and PyQt5 for rendering

ETE3 (3.1.3) is the last ete3 release and can be fragile to install on Python ≥3.12 (pins old numpy/PyQt5). If t.render() fails, fall back to writing the Newick tree and viewing it in FigTree/iTOL, or use the maintained successor ete4 (note: ete4 changed the TreeStyle/render API, so the snippets below are ete3-specific).

When to Use This Skill

Use phylogenetics when:

  • Evolutionary relationships: Which organism/gene is most closely related to my sequence?
  • Viral phylodynamics: Trace outbreak spread and estimate transmission dates
  • Protein family analysis: Infer evolutionary relationships within a gene family
  • Horizontal gene transfer detection: Identify genes with discordant species/gene trees
  • Ancestral sequence reconstruction: Infer ancestral protein sequences
  • Molecular clock analysis: Estimate divergence dates using temporal sampling
  • GWAS companion: Place variants in evolutionary context (e.g., SARS-CoV-2 variants)
  • Microbiology: Species phylogeny from 16S rRNA or core genome phylogeny

Read the full file on GitHub · 414 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. 11d ago First seen · 414 lines · 152 tokens per session scan A c3ba902acd49

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-phylogenetics is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 152 tokens to every session and 4,133 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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