research-methodology

research-methodology is a skill for Claude Code from itallstartedwithaidea/agent-skills. It costs 42 tokens per session (1,378 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to planning scientific research, from forming testable questions and reviewing existing studies to designing experiments and preparing papers for review.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to develop hypotheses, plan experiments, conduct literature reviews, define data-collection methods, prepare ethics materials, or format research submissions.
Why use it?
It helps prevent weak study designs, missing comparison groups, unsupported conclusions, and procedures that cannot be repeated.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions Claude Code; built for cline.

Part of the all-skills plugin — 73 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to develop hypotheses, plan experiments, conduct literature reviews, define data-collection methods, prepare ethics materials, or format research submissions.

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

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install all-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 73 skills.

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-methodology

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/itallstartedwithaidea/agent-skills/research-methodology.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/itallstartedwithaidea/agent-skills/research-methodology)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/itallstartedwithaidea/agent-skills/research-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/itallstartedwithaidea/agent-skills/research-methodology.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,378 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 $0.00042 $0.01378
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.00689
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00276
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00138

Measured 8d ago against content hash 3459fd620164, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-methodology 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 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.

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/scientific-research/research-methodology/SKILL.md · 143 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 143 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Methodology

Part of Agent Skills™ by googleadsagent.ai™

Description

Research Methodology guides the agent through the complete scientific research lifecycle: hypothesis generation from literature gaps, experimental design with proper controls, systematic literature review, data collection protocols, and peer review preparation. The agent functions as a research collaborator that enforces methodological rigor at every stage.

Weak methodology invalidates results regardless of how sophisticated the analysis is. This skill prevents common methodological failures: hypotheses that are unfalsifiable, experiments without proper controls, sample sizes without power analysis, and conclusions that overreach the data. The agent asks the hard questions early—before time and resources are committed to a flawed design.

The skill also covers the practical aspects of research preparation: structuring literature searches with Boolean queries, maintaining citation databases, designing reproducible experimental protocols, preparing materials for ethical review boards, and formatting submissions to meet journal-specific requirements. It bridges the gap between knowing what good research looks like and executing it systematically.

Use When

  • Formulating research questions and hypotheses
  • Designing experiments with proper controls and sample sizes
  • Conducting systematic literature reviews
  • Preparing manuscripts for peer review submission
  • Writing grant proposals or research proposals
  • Evaluating the methodology of existing papers

How It Works

graph TD
    A[Research Question] --> B[Literature Review]
    B --> C[Identify Knowledge Gap]
    C --> D[Formulate Hypothesis]
    D --> E[Design Experiment]
    E --> F[Power Analysis: Sample Size]
    F --> G[Define Controls + Variables]
    G --> H[Ethical Review Preparation]
    H --> I[Data Collection Protocol]
    I --> J[Analysis Plan: Pre-registered]
    J --> K[Execute + Collect Data]
    K --> L[Analyze per Pre-registered Plan]
    L --> M[Write Manuscript]
    M --> N[Peer Review Preparation]

Read the full file on GitHub · 143 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. 8d ago First seen · 143 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 3459fd620164

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-methodology is a skill published in the GitHub repository itallstartedwithaidea/agent-skills (37 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 1,378 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 2026-08-30.