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.
npx skills add ashaykubal/essential-agents-skills --skill researchgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ashaykubal/essential-agents-skillsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashaykubal/essential-agents-skills/research)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashaykubal/essential-agents-skills/research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ashaykubal/essential-agents-skills/research/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ashaykubal/essential-agents-skills/research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ashaykubal/essential-agents-skills/research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00031 | $0.02977 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00015 | $0.01489 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00006 | $0.00595 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00298 |
Grade A, and why
research scanned grade A with 0 findings 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.
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.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 299 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Research
Structured multi-viewpoint research on a given topic. Spawns 5 Sonnet sub-agents in parallel, each analyzing from a distinct analytical viewpoint, then synthesizes into a single research document.
When to Use This Skill
Load this skill when the user request matches ANY of these patterns:
| Trigger Pattern | Example User Request |
|---|---|
| Deep research | "Research agent teams", "Investigate loop detection" |
| Topic exploration | "What do we know about X?", "Explore approaches to Y" |
| Pre-planning research | "Before we build X, research the landscape" |
| Multi-viewpoint analysis | "Analyze X from multiple angles" |
DO NOT use for:
- Evaluating implementation feasibility (use
brainstorm) - Quick fact lookup (use web search or codebase exploration)
- Code review (use
code-review) - Debugging (use
issue-debugging)
Dependencies
| Category | Files | Requirement | When to Load |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viewpoint definitions | references/viewpoint-*.md |
REQUIRED | Always load all 5 before spawning agents |
| Output templates | templates/viewpoint-output.md |
REQUIRED | Include in every agent prompt |
| Synthesis template | templates/synthesis-output.md |
REQUIRED | Use when writing synthesis |
| Subagent prompting | subagent-prompting skill |
REQUIRED | Load at Stage 1 for 4-part prompt template |
Fallback behavior:
- If a viewpoint reference file is missing: Note in diagnostic log, reduce to 4 agents, continue
- If output template is missing: Use the schema from this SKILL.md directly
Usage
/research <topic-or-prompt> [--context <file>]
/research --doc <path-to-document>
Arguments:
<topic-or-prompt>- Free-text topic description or problem statement--context <file>- Additional context file to provide to all agents--doc <path>- Use a document as the topic source instead of free text
What ships with it
8 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.
- references/viewpoint-contrarian.md 2.6 KB
- references/viewpoint-direct-investigation.md 2.4 KB
- references/viewpoint-first-principles.md 2.6 KB
- references/viewpoint-practitioner.md 2.6 KB
- references/viewpoint-prior-art.md 2.8 KB
- templates/diagnostic-output.yaml 1.5 KB
- templates/synthesis-output.md 1.5 KB
- templates/viewpoint-output.md 961 B
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.
- 11d ago First seen · 299 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A 53c051e16698
research is a skill published in the GitHub repository ashaykubal/essential-agents-skills (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 2,977 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.
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