autoresearch

autoresearch is a skill for Claude Code from ckorhonen/claude-skills. It costs 60 tokens per session (4,140 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured process for improving a program through repeated experiments. It tests one proposed change at a time, measures the result repeatedly, records failures, and produces local reports.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to optimize a clearly defined target, compare code changes with measurements, keep an experiment history, and review results in HTML reports and graphs.
Why use it?
It prevents decisions based on a single lucky benchmark or on changes whose effects were never recorded.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Needs its repository: it reads a path above its own folder, which exists only inside the repository. The line is git worktree add ../autoresearch-<goal>-<date> -b autoresearch/<goal>-<date>.

Part of the claude-skills plugin — 62 skills, 4 commands, 7 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to optimize a clearly defined target, compare code changes with measurements, keep an experiment history, and review results in HTML reports and graphs.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ckorhonen/claude-skills
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ckorhonen/claude-skills/autoresearch

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 62 skills, 4 commands, 7 agents.

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 autoresearch

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ckorhonen/claude-skills/autoresearch"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ckorhonen/claude-skills/autoresearch.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 60 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,140 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00060 $0.04140
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.02070
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00828
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00414

Measured 12d ago against content hash 396ffd5ae34a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

autoresearch 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 12d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 5 executable files (scripts/common.py, scripts/init_experiment.py, scripts/log_experiment.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.

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.

skills/autoresearch/SKILL.md · 449 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 449 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Autoresearch

Autonomous optimization is only useful when it behaves like disciplined research, not benchmark gambling.

This skill runs a strict experiment loop:

  • clarify the target before changing code
  • write down hypotheses before testing them
  • measure with repeated trials, not one-off wins
  • record every experiment, including failures
  • generate local reports and graphs that are not checked in

Core Principles

  1. No silent scope inference

If the request is vague, stop and ask a short up-front Q&A before starting. Do not silently invent the target workload, correctness bar, or tradeoffs.

  1. One experiment = one hypothesis

State the proposed change and why it should help before making it. Avoid bundles of unrelated tweaks.

  1. All experiments are logged

Every experiment must be enumerated in a machine-readable ledger, including discarded ideas, crashes, and failed checks.

  1. Repeated measures beat noisy anecdotes

Do not keep a change because of one fast run. Use warmups, repeated measurements, and an explicit decision rule.

  1. Artifacts stay local

Reports, CSVs, JSONL ledgers, and graphs belong in a local .autoresearch/ directory and should not be committed.

Available scripts

  • scripts/init_experiment.py — initialize .autoresearch/session.json, ensure .autoresearch/ stays untracked, and scaffold autoresearch.md when needed.
  • scripts/run_experiment.py — run warmups and measured trials, parse METRIC lines, run optional checks, and emit a JSON experiment record.
  • scripts/log_experiment.py — append an experiment to .autoresearch/results.jsonl, decide keep vs discard, and refresh CSV and HTML artifacts.
  • scripts/render_report.py — regenerate .autoresearch/results.csv and .autoresearch/report.html from the JSONL ledger.

All scripts are non-interactive, expose --help, emit structured JSON on stdout, and keep diagnostics on stderr.

Default workflow

  1. Initialize the session after the up-front Q&A:

Read the full file on GitHub · 449 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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. 12d ago First seen · 449 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A 396ffd5ae34a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

autoresearch is a skill published in the GitHub repository ckorhonen/claude-skills (14 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 4,140 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.

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