A research workflow that investigates a question using web sources, documentation, and the current project, then provides a sourced answer and recommendation. It can compare several investigations before weighing their results.

Use it to answer technical or project-specific questions, check current information, compare options, and support a recommendation with sources.

It reduces the need to search multiple places and combine conflicting information yourself. The result explains what is true, the available choices, their trade-offs, and how they fit the project.

research — Skill for Claude Code by swt-labs

Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw

Claude Code

/plugin install vbw

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install vbw, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 34 skills, 7 agents, 4 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw/research/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw/research)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw/research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw/research/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw/research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw/research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 461 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00032	$0.00461
Opus 5.5	$0.00013	$0.00184
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00006	$0.00092
Haiku 4.5	$0.00003	$0.00046

Measured today against content hash 26a17a27dd85, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, 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 today.

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.

plugin/skills/research/SKILL.md · 33 lines

What it actually says

"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/vbw" config models 2>&1 || true
"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/vbw" config effort 2>&1 || true
"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/vbw" workflows on 2>&1 || true
"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/vbw" interview 2>&1 || true

Write to the user's level, explanation depth and involvement (above; "-": plain words), and pass them to the workflow as "profile": {"level", "depth", "involvement"} (none for "-").

The question: $ARGUMENTS

If it is empty, ask what they want to find out. VBW needs the Workflow tool: the workflows line above turns Dynamic workflows on (say so in one line when it did); without the tool, say why and stop. (Outside a VBW project the models and effort lines show an error; omit both then.)

Say in one line what will be looked into, and why it matters here.
Start the Workflow vbw:researching with args {"question": "<the question>", "models": <the JSON above>, "effort": <the effort JSON above>, "profile": ...}: four Scouts research it in parallel (official sources, practice, what is current, project fit); one weighs them.
Give the user its answer in plain words: what is true, options with trade-offs, the recommendation, sources with links, and what could not be confirmed (angles in missing).
If it settles a decision, offer to record it: vbw decide "<decision>" "<why>". If it changes what to build, offer /vbw:discuss or /vbw:vibe.

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.

today First seen · 33 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 26a17a27dd85

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research is a skill published in the GitHub repository swt-labs/vibe-better-with-claude-code-vbw (85 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 461 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-10-22.

Research

local-ai-agents

Build local-first AI agents that run entirely on a developer workstation with Microsoft Foundry Local and Qwen function-calling models. Covers Small Language Models (SLMs), the OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, sandboxed local tools, local RAG with Chroma, local MCP servers, hybrid cloud/local routing, and the…

microsoft/ai-agents-for-beginners · 200 tokens

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

next-cache-components-adoption

Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…

vercel/next.js · 95 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens

insight-error-page

Write or audit an insight-kind error page for the Next.js dev overlay. Use when creating a new errors/ .mdx page, auditing an existing one, or checking that a page matches the framework fix cards. Covers page structure, title alignment, FixCard cards with Copy prompt button, code snippets, terminology verification…

vercel/next.js · 83 tokens