scout

scout is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ResearAI/DeepScientist. It costs 26 tokens per session (1,615 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A research-planning skill for clarifying an unclear question, dataset, measurement, or starting point before deeper work begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to frame a research task, identify the minimum missing information, find a trustworthy baseline, and decide what work should happen next.
Why use it?
It prevents later research or implementation from being built on an uncertain task definition, data split, metric, or baseline.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to frame a research task, identify the minimum missing information…

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/researai/deepscientist/scout
About the project

DeepScientist is a local research studio that manages the cycle from baseline experiments through research findings and paper-ready outputs. Researchers use it to organize autonomous scientific investigations, review progress, and take control when needed. The catalogue add-ons provide workflows and agent integrations for running research projects with it.

ResearAI/DeepScientist · 3,315 stars · on GitHub

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 ResearAI/DeepScientist --skill scout
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ResearAI/DeepScientist

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 scout

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/researai/deepscientist/scout.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/researai/deepscientist/scout)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/researai/deepscientist/scout"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/researai/deepscientist/scout.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 26 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,615 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 $0.00026 $0.01615
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00807
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00323
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00161

Measured 7d ago against content hash 5c607cfa6db4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

scout 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 7d 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.

src/skills/scout/SKILL.md · 182 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 182 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Scout

Use this skill when the quest does not yet have a stable research frame. The goal is to make the task frame concrete enough that a heavier stage can start with confidence.

Match signals

Use scout when:

  • the user goal is still ambiguous
  • the dataset or split contract is unclear
  • the primary metric is unclear
  • no trustworthy baseline has been identified
  • the paper or repo neighborhood is still thin
  • the quest was resumed after a long pause and framing needs reconstruction
  • the next stage is blocked by ambiguity rather than by implementation

Do not use scout when:

  • the user already fixed the paper, baseline, dataset, metric contract, and scope
  • the quest already has a validated baseline and is ready for ideation or execution
  • the real blocker is execution or verification rather than framing

One-sentence summary

Resolve only the minimum framing unknowns that change the next anchor, then stop once baseline or idea becomes durable and obvious.

Control workflow

  1. Reconstruct the current frame from durable state. Make the current task, metric contract, baseline status, and blockers explicit before searching.
  2. Identify the minimum unknowns. Keep only the unknowns that materially block baseline, idea, or both.
  3. Search only the unresolved neighborhood. Reuse memory and local evidence first, then search the smallest paper, repo, and benchmark surface that can change the next anchor.
  4. Make the evaluation contract and baseline direction explicit. End with a small decision-facing baseline shortlist rather than a broad literature dump.
  5. Record the next anchor or blocker and stop on clarity. The right output is a durable frame, not search exhaustion.

AVOID / pitfalls

  • Do not let scout become endless exploration.
  • Do not keep searching once the next anchor is already clear.
  • Do not guess the metric, split, or baseline identity when local evidence is still ambiguous.
  • Do not ask the user ordinary technical questions before checking local evidence first.
  • Do not repeat the same wide search from scratch when existing survey notes, memory, or durable quest files already narrow the space.
  • Do not write long paper summaries that do not change the next stage.
  • Do not inflate novelty when the apparent gap is already closed by straightforward scaling, standard engineering, or a strong recent paper.

Read the full file on GitHub · 182 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 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. 7d ago First seen · 182 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 5c607cfa6db4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

scout is a skill published in the GitHub repository ResearAI/DeepScientist (3,315 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 1,615 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 2026-08-30.

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