research

A research workflow for investigating a topic or question using multiple sources and combining the results into a cited explanation. It can cover broad topics, comparisons, implementation questions, and codebase questions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for technical deep dives, comparisons, questions about how teams work, and investigations of how a codebase implements a feature.
Why use it?
It provides a repeatable way to clarify the question, gather relevant evidence, and avoid relying on a single source or unsupported claims.

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/mpaarating/ai-workflow-kit/research
Any agent
npx skills add mpaarating/ai-workflow-kit --skill research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mpaarating/ai-workflow-kit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 15 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,314 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 $0.00015 $0.01314
Opus 5 $0.00008 $0.00657
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00263
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00131

Measured 2d ago against content hash 39c131a9eb27, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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.

skills/research/SKILL.md · 136 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 136 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research

Trigger Phrases

  • "research [topic]"
  • "deep dive on [topic]"
  • "synthesize [topic]"

Inputs

The user provides a topic or question:

  • A broad topic: "research React Server Components"
  • A specific question: "research how other teams handle feature flag cleanup"
  • A comparison: "research Zustand vs Jotai for our use case"
  • A codebase question: "research how auth middleware works in this repo"

Workflow

Step 1: Clarify Scope

Assess the topic. If the request is clear and specific, proceed immediately. If ambiguous, ask one clarifying question — no more.

Good (proceed immediately):

  • "research how to implement rate limiting in Express"
  • "deep dive on React 19 cache API"

Needs clarification:

  • "research databases" — too broad. Ask: "What aspect? Choosing one, optimizing queries, migration strategies?"
  • "research the bug" — no context. Ask: "Which bug? Point me to a ticket or error message."

Step 2: Search Sources in Parallel

Search all available sources simultaneously. Use whichever sources are accessible:

Web Search
  • Search for the topic using web search
  • Look for: official documentation, well-regarded blog posts, conference talks, GitHub discussions
  • Prefer primary sources (official docs, RFCs, author posts) over secondary summaries
  • Skip SEO-farm results and outdated content (check publication dates)
Codebase Search
  • Search the current repository for related code, patterns, and prior art
  • Use filename search and content search
  • Look for: existing implementations, similar patterns, comments referencing the topic, related tests
  • If the repo is part of a monorepo or org, note whether broader search might be useful
Docs Search
  • Search {{notes}} for internal documentation, decision records, or previous research on the topic
  • Look for: ADRs, RFCs, design docs, wiki pages, previous research briefs

Step 3: Evaluate and Filter Sources

For each source found:

  • Assess relevance (directly addresses the topic vs. tangentially related)
  • Assess credibility (official docs > well-known authors > random blog posts)
  • Assess freshness (recent > old, especially for fast-moving topics)
  • Discard sources that are low-relevance, outdated, or unreliable
  • Keep the top 5-10 most valuable sources

Read the full file on GitHub · 136 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 · 136 lines · 15 tokens per session scan A 39c131a9eb27

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research is a skill published in the GitHub repository mpaarating/ai-workflow-kit (2 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 15 tokens to every session and 1,314 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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