bids

A standard way to name, arrange, and describe neuroscience and biomedical research data, including MRI, EEG, and behavioral recordings. It makes datasets easier for people and software to understand.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to organize, query, validate, and convert datasets into BIDS format, including converting medical images and adding metadata.
Why use it?
It removes the confusion caused by inconsistent file names, folders, and missing metadata when sharing or analyzing research data.

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/k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills/bids
Any agent
npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill bids
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 80 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,674 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 $0.00080 $0.03674
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.01837
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00735
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00367

Measured yesterday against content hash b7fcb72c1c15, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bids 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 yesterday.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/update_schema.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/bids/SKILL.md · 238 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 238 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS)

Overview

The Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) is a community standard for organizing and describing neuroscience and biomedical research datasets. It defines a consistent file naming convention, directory hierarchy, and metadata schema so that datasets are immediately understandable by humans and software tools alike. BIDS is governed by the BIDS Specification (currently v1.11.x) and is maintained by the community via the BIDS-Standard GitHub organization.

While BIDS originated for MRI, it has grown well beyond neuroimaging. The specification now covers 11 modalities spanning imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioral data:

  • Imaging: MRI (structural, functional, diffusion, fieldmaps, perfusion/ASL), PET, microscopy
  • Electrophysiology: EEG, MEG, iEEG (intracranial EEG), EMG
  • Other: NIRS (near-infrared spectroscopy), motion capture, behavioral data (without imaging), MR spectroscopy

Active BEPs are extending BIDS further — notably BEP032 (microelectrode electrophysiology) will add support for extracellular recordings including Neuropixels probes, bringing BIDS to a prevalent methodology in animal neuroscience research (see also the neuropixels-analysis skill).

Adoption is required or strongly encouraged by major data repositories (OpenNeuro, DANDI), leading journals (NeuroImage, Human Brain Mapping, Scientific Data), and funding agencies (NIH, ERC).

The Python ecosystem for BIDS centers on PyBIDS (pybids) for querying and indexing BIDS datasets, and the bids-validator (Deno-based, available as PyPI package bids-validator-deno or via Deno directly) for compliance checking. Conversion from DICOM is typically done with HeuDiConv, dcm2bids, or BIDScoin.

When to Use This Skill

Apply this skill when:

  • Organizing raw neuroscience data (imaging, electrophysiology, behavioral) into BIDS-compliant directory structures
  • Querying an existing BIDS dataset to find specific files by subject, session, task, run, or modality
  • Validating a dataset against the BIDS specification before sharing or submission
  • Converting DICOM data from scanners into BIDS format
  • Writing or editing JSON sidecar metadata files
  • Creating BIDS-compliant derivatives (preprocessed data, analysis outputs)
  • Setting up a dataset_description.json for a new dataset
  • Working with BIDS entities (subject, session, task, acquisition, run, etc.)
  • Configuring .bidsignore to exclude files from validation
  • Preparing data for upload to OpenNeuro, DANDI, or other BIDS-aware repositories

Read the full file on GitHub · 238 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. yesterday First seen · 238 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A b7fcb72c1c15

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bids is a skill published in the GitHub repository K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills (40,390 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 3,674 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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