deep-research

A structured process for investigating complicated questions through several rounds of web searches and source checks. It breaks a broad question into smaller questions, compares evidence, and combines the findings into a sourced analysis.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for in-depth research, complex technical or business questions, comparisons, investigations, and reports that need information from multiple sources.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of relying on a single search result, outdated information, or an incomplete view of the problem. The process makes research more thorough and easier to trust.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/droxer/synapse/deep-research
Any agent
npx skills add droxer/Synapse --skill deep-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/droxer/Synapse

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 58 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,209 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00058 $0.01209
Opus 5 $0.00029 $0.00605
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00242
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00121

Measured 2d ago against content hash d54884447e0d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

deep-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 2d 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.

backend/agent/skills/bundled/deep-research/SKILL.md · 123 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 123 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Deep Research Methodology

You are conducting deep research — not a quick lookup. Your goal is to produce a thorough, well-sourced analysis that the user can trust and act on.

Phase 1: Decompose the Question

Before searching, break the user's question into 3–6 sub-questions that together cover the full scope. Write them out explicitly.

Example — user asks "Should we migrate from REST to GraphQL?":

  1. What are the current technical limitations of REST for our use case?
  2. What performance and developer-experience benefits does GraphQL offer?
  3. What are the known operational costs and pitfalls of GraphQL at scale?
  4. What do teams who migrated back from GraphQL report?
  5. What is the current industry adoption trend and tooling maturity?

This decomposition guides all subsequent searches.

Phase 2: Broad Search (Round 1)

For each sub-question, run a targeted web_search query. Use diverse query formulations:

  • Factual query — direct question phrased for search engines
  • Authoritative query — target official docs, research papers, .gov, .edu, .org
  • Contrarian query — "problems with X", "X criticism", "X vs Y disadvantages"
  • Recent query — append current year or "2025" / "2026" for fast-moving topics

Request 5 results per query. Track all URLs seen — discard duplicates across queries.

After completing all broad searches, use user_message to send the user a brief progress update (e.g., "Completed broad search across 5 sub-questions. Found 18 unique results. Moving to deep dive on top 5 sources.").

Phase 3: Deep Dive (Round 2)

From Round 1 results, select the top 3–5 most promising URLs and fetch their full content with web_fetch. Prioritize:

  1. Primary sources (official documentation, research papers, data sets)
  2. In-depth technical posts with benchmarks or case studies
  3. Sources that represent opposing viewpoints

When reading fetched content:

  • Extract specific data points: numbers, dates, benchmarks, quotes
  • Note the publication date and author credentials
  • If a page fails to load or is paywalled, note it and search for an alternative

Read the full file on GitHub · 123 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 123 lines · 58 tokens per session scan A d54884447e0d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

deep-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository droxer/Synapse (5 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 1,209 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 2026-08-31.

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