research-lookup

research-lookup is a skill for Claude Code from dralkh/iktinah. It costs 97 tokens per session (5,695 once invoked), scanned C, original, MIT.

A tool for finding current research information, papers, scientific evidence, and technical documentation through web and academic searches.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find papers, verify findings, gather background information, collect citations, and look up technical research documentation.
Why use it?
It reduces the manual work of searching across sources and checking whether scientific claims are supported by recent research.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: built for openclaw.

Good fit Use it to find papers, verify findings, gather background information, collect citations, and look up technical research documentation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dralkh/iktinah/research-lookup
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 dralkh/iktinah --skill research-lookup
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dralkh/iktinah

Made for: Claude Code.

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 research-lookup

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dralkh/iktinah/research-lookup"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dralkh/iktinah/research-lookup.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 97 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,695 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 2 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 $0.00097 $0.05695
Opus 5 $0.00048 $0.02848
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.01139
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00570

Measured 7d ago against content hash e8838f7f7c70, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

research-lookup scanned grade C with 2 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 7d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 6 executable files (examples.py, lookup.py, research_lookup.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.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

curl -fsSL https://parallel.ai/install.sh | bash

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -fsSL https://parallel.ai/install.sh | bash
Origin

Copies of this mod

4 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/research-lookup/SKILL.md · 551 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 551 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Information Lookup

Overview

This skill provides real-time research information lookup with intelligent backend routing:

  • parallel-cli search (parallel-web skill): Primary and default backend for all research queries. Fast, cost-effective web search with academic source prioritization. Uses parallel-cli search with --include-domains for scholarly sources.
  • Parallel Chat API (core model): Secondary backend for complex, multi-source deep research requiring extended synthesis (60s-5min latency). Use only when explicitly needed.
  • Perplexity sonar-pro-search (via OpenRouter): Used only for academic-specific paper searches where scholarly database access is critical.

The skill automatically detects query type and routes to the optimal backend.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need:

  • Current Research Information: Latest studies, papers, and findings
  • Literature Verification: Check facts, statistics, or claims against current research
  • Background Research: Gather context and supporting evidence for scientific writing
  • Citation Sources: Find relevant papers and studies to cite
  • Technical Documentation: Look up specifications, protocols, or methodologies
  • Market/Industry Data: Current statistics, trends, competitive intelligence
  • Recent Developments: Emerging trends, breakthroughs, announcements

Visual Enhancement with Scientific Schematics

When creating documents with this skill, always consider adding scientific diagrams and schematics to enhance visual communication.

If your document does not already contain schematics or diagrams:

  • Use the scientific-schematics skill to generate AI-powered publication-quality diagrams
  • Simply describe your desired diagram in natural language
python scripts/generate_schematic.py "your diagram description" -o figures/output.png

Automatic Backend Selection

The skill automatically routes queries to the best backend based on content:

Read the full file on GitHub · 551 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 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 · 551 lines · 97 tokens per session scan C e8838f7f7c70

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-lookup is a skill published in the GitHub repository dralkh/iktinah (77 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 97 tokens to every session and 5,695 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (downloads and executes remote code, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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