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 HK-hub/AgentSkills --skill asta-skillgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HK-hub/AgentSkillsWrote 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/hk-hub/agentskills/asta-skill)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hk-hub/agentskills/asta-skill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hk-hub/agentskills/asta-skill.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.00045 | $0.03112 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00023 | $0.01556 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00009 | $0.00622 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00311 |
Grade B, and why
asta-skill scanned grade B 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 8d 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.
Reads agent configuration directoriesmediumAgent snooping
.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/ hold keys, settings and other credentials a mod has no legitimate need for.
- Codex CLI: add `[mcp_servers.asta] url = "https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1"` and `env_http_headers = { "x-api-key" = "ASTA_API_KEY" }` to `~/.codex/config.toml`. This is a copy
100% identical to asta-skill — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 133 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Asta MCP — Academic Paper Search
Asta is Ai2's Scientific Corpus Tool, exposing the Semantic Scholar academic graph over MCP (streamable HTTP transport). This skill tells agents which Asta tool to call for which intent, and how to compose them into useful workflows.
- MCP endpoint:
https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1 - Auth:
x-api-keyheader (request key at https://share.hsforms.com/1L4hUh20oT3mu8iXJQMV77w3ioxm) - Transport: streamable HTTP
Prerequisite Check
Before invoking any tool, verify the Asta MCP server is registered in the host agent. Tool names will be prefixed by the MCP server name chosen at install time (commonly asta__<tool> or mcp__asta__<tool>).
If no Asta tools are visible, do not make raw HTTP calls or invent results. Tell the user to register https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1 as a streamable HTTP MCP server with an x-api-key header, then restart/reload the host. Minimal setup hints:
- Codex CLI: add
[mcp_servers.asta] url = "https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1"andenv_http_headers = { "x-api-key" = "ASTA_API_KEY" }to~/.codex/config.toml. - Claude Code: run
claude mcp add -t http -s user asta https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1 -H "x-api-key: $ASTA_API_KEY". - Generic MCP clients: configure server URL
https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1with header{ "x-api-key": "<YOUR_API_KEY>" }.
Tool Map — Intent → Asta Tool
| User intent | Asta tool | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Broad topic search | search_papers_by_relevance |
Supports venue + date filters |
| Known paper title | search_paper_by_title |
Optional venues + publication_date_range filters |
| Known DOI / arXiv / PMID / CorpusId / MAG / ACL / SHA / URL | get_paper |
Single-paper lookup |
| Multiple known IDs at once | get_paper_batch |
Batch lookup — pass ids as a JSON array (not a comma-separated string, unlike snippet_search's paper_ids); prefer over N sequential get_paper calls; unresolvable IDs are silently dropped (no null/error), so reconcile returned paperIds against your input |
| Who cited paper X | get_citations |
Forward citations, paginated; accepts publication_date_range but not venues; limit defaults to 100 |
| Find author by name | search_authors_by_name |
Default fields="name" returns only name + authorId — explicitly request affiliations,paperCount,citationCount,hIndex,externalIds to get anything rankable; externalIds carries ORCID/DBLP (url/homepage are also selectable) |
| An author's publications | get_author_papers |
Pass author id; field param is paper_fields (not fields); limit defaults to 1000 — set it explicitly |
| Find passages mentioning X | snippet_search |
~500-word excerpts (title/abstract/body, excludes captions & bibliography); see snippet-specific params below |
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.
- 8d ago First seen · 133 lines · 45 tokens per session scan B 6b86a0650ad3
asta-skill is a skill published in the GitHub repository HK-hub/AgentSkills (6 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 3,112 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (reads agent configuration directories). It is 100% identical to asta-skill, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.
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