research-proposal

research-proposal is a skill for Claude Code from muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (2,048 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for planning and improving a research proposal, which is a document explaining why a study matters and how it will be carried out. It covers PhD applications, ethics submissions, funding bids, conference proposals, and grant pre-proposals.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to develop a research question, explain the background and gap, choose methods, address ethics, outline expected contributions, and prepare proposals for study approval, funding, admission, or conferences.
Why use it?
It helps connect a worthwhile research question with a credible plan for answering it. It also adapts the structure and emphasis to the intended reader, such as an admissions panel, ethics board, or funder.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the academic-writer plugin — 27 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to develop a research question, explain the background and gap, choose methods, address ethics, outline expected contributions, and prepare proposals for study approval, funding, admission, or conferences.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/research-proposal
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 muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills --skill research-proposal
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install academic-writer, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 27 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-proposal

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/research-proposal/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/research-proposal)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/research-proposal"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/research-proposal/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for research-proposal

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/research-proposal"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/research-proposal.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,048 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 $0.00000 $0.02048
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01024
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00410
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00205

Measured 11d ago against content hash 9b3ff1dcb639, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

research-proposal 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 11d 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-proposal/SKILL.md · 200 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 200 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Proposal

A research proposal argues two things simultaneously: that the research question is worth answering and that you are capable of answering it. Both must be demonstrated convincingly.


Types of Research Proposals

Type Purpose Audience Typical Length
PhD Application Proposal Demonstrate research potential and fit Admissions committee + potential supervisor 1,000–2,000 words
Ethics Submission (IRB/HREC/HRA) Gain ethical approval before data collection Ethics board 2,000–5,000 words
Internal Funding Bid Secure departmental or faculty funding Internal review committee 500–2,000 words
Conference Research Proposal Propose a paper or presentation Programme committee 300–500 words abstract
Research Grant Pre-proposal Invitation to submit full grant Programme officers 2–5 pages

Standard Research Proposal Structure

1. Title

  • Descriptive and specific (not vague)
  • Should indicate: topic + method + population/context where relevant
  • Example: "Examining the Role of Social Capital in Post-Conflict Economic Recovery: A Mixed-Methods Study in Northern Mali"

2. Background and Literature Context

  • Establish the significance of the topic
  • Summarise what is currently known
  • Identify the specific gap your research will address
  • Length: 20–30% of the proposal

3. Research Questions / Objectives

  • Central research question: The overarching question guiding the study
  • Sub-questions (2–4): Specific, researchable aspects of the central question
  • Objectives: What the research will actually do (usually verb-led: "to examine," "to compare," "to assess")

4. Theoretical Framework

  • What conceptual lens or theoretical perspective will guide interpretation?
  • Why is this framework appropriate for your question?
  • How does it connect to your methodology?

5. Methodology

  • Research design (qualitative / quantitative / mixed methods)
  • Data sources and collection methods
  • Sampling strategy and justification
  • Analysis approach
  • Limitations and how they will be mitigated

Read the full file on GitHub · 200 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. 11d ago First seen · 200 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 9b3ff1dcb639

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-proposal is a skill published in the GitHub repository muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills (6 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 2,048 tokens. 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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