prior-art-search

prior-art-search is a skill for Claude Code from RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator. It costs 26 tokens per session (2,271 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A seven-step process for searching existing patent documents and judging whether an invention may be patentable. It uses written searches, technical classification codes, official patent data and date analysis; prior art means earlier public work that may affect a patent.

In plain words
What is it for?
Defining an invention, searching more than one patent source, finding related patents by classification, examining timelines, assessing patentability, checking freedom to operate, and preparing an Information Disclosure Statement for a patent application.
Why use it?
It organizes a broad patent search so important earlier inventions, possible blocking patents and filing evidence are less likely to be missed.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: model in frontmatter.

Part of the claude-patent-creator-standalone plugin — 17 skills, 16 commands, 13 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Defining an invention, searching more than one patent source, finding related patents by classification, examining timelines, assessing patentability, checking freedom to operate, and preparing an Information Disclosure Statement for a patent application.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-search
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 RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator --skill prior-art-search
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-patent-creator-standalone, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills, 16 commands, 13 agents, 2 hooks.

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 prior-art-search

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-search/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-search)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-search/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 prior-art-search

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/robthepcguy/claude-patent-creator/prior-art-search.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" 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 2,271 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Excessive Agency · line 5
    Skill selects an external model or provider that may use a different account or billing plan than the operator expects. Undisclosed model switches can cause unexpected cost or quota consumption.
    Fix: Remove the model/provider override or disclose it prominently and require explicit operator approval before invoking an external coding CLI or billed model.
How audits are shown
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 $0.02271
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.01136
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00454
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00227

Measured 11d ago against content hash 900b21aa6cc0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prior-art-search 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (prior_art_types.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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/prior-art-search/SKILL.md · 358 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 358 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Prior Art Search Skill

Systematic 7-step methodology for comprehensive patent prior art searches and patentability assessments.

When to Use

Invoke this skill when users ask to:

  • Conduct prior art search for an invention
  • Assess patentability of an idea
  • Perform freedom-to-operate analysis
  • Find blocking patents
  • Research patent landscapes
  • Prepare for patent filing

What This Skill Does

Implements a professional 7-step prior art search methodology combining:

  • Keyword searches across 100M+ patents (BigQuery)
  • CPC classification searches
  • USPTO API searches
  • Timeline analysis
  • Patentability assessment
  • IDS (Information Disclosure Statement) preparation

The 7-Step Methodology

Step 1: Invention Definition (2-3 min)

Goal: Extract key features and define innovation scope

Process:

  1. Interview user about invention
  2. Extract core technical elements
  3. Identify novel features
  4. List all components/steps
  5. Define search scope

Output: Structured invention summary with key features

Questions to Ask:

  • What problem does this solve?
  • What are the key components/steps?
  • What makes this different from existing solutions?
  • What is the core innovation?

Step 2: Keyword Strategy (2-3 min)

Goal: Develop comprehensive search keyword list

Process:

  1. Primary keywords from invention
  2. Synonyms and variations
  3. Technical terminology
  4. Industry-specific terms
  5. Synonym sets to run as separate searches

Query syntax (important): the keyword search splits a query into terms and requires every term to appear (AND), each matching the title, abstract, or claims (results are ranked by relevance, title hits weighted highest). It does not parse Boolean operators — AND/OR/parentheses are ignored. So:

  • Use plain space-separated terms for the AND set: blockchain authentication.
  • Wrap a phrase in double quotes to require it verbatim: "distributed ledger".
  • For OR / synonyms, run separate searches and merge the results — don't put OR in one query.

Read the full file on GitHub · 358 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 11d ago First seen · 358 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A 900b21aa6cc0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prior-art-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository RobThePCGuy/Claude-Patent-Creator (181 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 2,271 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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