thesis-dissertation-guide

thesis-dissertation-guide is a skill for Claude Code from muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (3,721 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for planning and writing master's theses and PhD dissertations, which are substantial research documents completed as part of an advanced degree.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan chapters, choose between a monograph and article-based format, and navigate thesis requirements.
Why use it?
It explains how theses differ from shorter journal articles and how to meet the expectations of supervisors, examiners, universities, and the academic field.

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 plan chapters, choose between a monograph and article-based format, and navigate thesis requirements.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/thesis-dissertation-guide
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 thesis-dissertation-guide
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 thesis-dissertation-guide

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/thesis-dissertation-guide/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/thesis-dissertation-guide)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/thesis-dissertation-guide"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/thesis-dissertation-guide/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 thesis-dissertation-guide

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/thesis-dissertation-guide"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/thesis-dissertation-guide.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 3,721 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 $0.03721
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01861
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00744
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00372

Measured 11d ago against content hash cebf4f238a65, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

thesis-dissertation-guide 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/thesis-dissertation-guide/SKILL.md · 411 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 411 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Thesis & Dissertation Guide

A thesis or dissertation is the capstone of a research degree — a sustained piece of scholarship demonstrating the candidate's ability to conduct independent research. Unlike journal articles, which are typically concise and focused, theses allow for comprehensive depth and must satisfy multiple stakeholders: supervisors, examiners, the institution, and the discipline.


Thesis Types

Monograph

Structure: A single, book-length manuscript with integrated chapters.

Typical in: Humanities, social sciences, UK/Europe PhDs.

Characteristics:

  • Sustained argument across 60,000–100,000 words
  • Unified narrative arc
  • Comprehensive literature integration

Article-Based (Cumulative / Publication-Based)

Structure: A compilation of published or submitted papers, with an overarching introduction and synthesis discussion.

Typical in: Sciences, engineering, medicine, increasingly common in social sciences.

Characteristics:

  • 3–5 journal articles (published or manuscript-ready)
  • General introduction (10,000–15,000 words)
  • General discussion/conclusion (5,000–10,000 words)
  • May be required or optional depending on institution

Standard Chapter Structure by Discipline

Humanities (Literature, History, Philosophy, Arts)

Chapter Typical Length Content
Introduction 5,000–10,000 Hook, research questions, contribution, chapter outline
Literature Review 10,000–20,000 Critical engagement with key texts, historiography, theoretical frameworks
Theoretical Framework 5,000–10,000 (may be separate) Theoretical lens, key concepts, position in the field
Analysis Chapters (2–4) 10,000–15,000 each Close readings, archival work, case studies
Conclusion 5,000–8,000 Synthesis, contributions, limitations, future research

Total: 70,000–100,000 words (UK PhD); 150,000–300,000 words (German/Habilitationschrift)

Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering)

Read the full file on GitHub · 411 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 · 411 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A cebf4f238a65

Subscribe to this mod's changes

thesis-dissertation-guide 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 3,721 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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self-review

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