gene-database

gene-database is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from synthetic-sciences/openscience. It costs 49 tokens per session (1,453 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A programming guide to NCBI Gene, a database combining gene names, sequences, locations, functions, pathways, variations, and related references across species.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to search genes by symbol or identifier, retrieve sequences and metadata, examine functions and pathways, and run lookups for many genes at once.
Why use it?
It avoids manually checking several genomic resources when collecting gene annotations and related biological information.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

About the project

synthetic-sciences/openscience is an AI workbench that carries out scientific research by reading papers, forming hypotheses, writing and running code, conducting experiments, analyzing results, and preparing reports. Researchers use it for work in machine learning, biology, physics, and chemistry with remote or local models. Catalogue add-ons extend its scientific workflows through skills and instructions.

synthetic-sciences/openscience · 3,473 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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/synthetic-sciences/openscience/gene-database
Any agent
npx skills add synthetic-sciences/openscience --skill gene-database
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/synthetic-sciences/openscience

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 gene-database

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/synthetic-sciences/openscience/gene-database.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/synthetic-sciences/openscience/gene-database)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/synthetic-sciences/openscience/gene-database"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/synthetic-sciences/openscience/gene-database.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,453 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00049 $0.01453
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00727
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00291
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00145

Measured 2d ago against content hash 635e02d106fd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

gene-database 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 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/batch_gene_lookup.py, scripts/fetch_gene_data.py, scripts/query_gene.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

7 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

backend/cli/skills/databases/gene-database/SKILL.md · 179 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 179 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Gene Database

Overview

NCBI Gene is a comprehensive database integrating gene information from diverse species. It provides nomenclature, reference sequences (RefSeqs), chromosomal maps, biological pathways, genetic variations, phenotypes, and cross-references to global genomic resources.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be used when working with gene data including searching by gene symbol or ID, retrieving gene sequences and metadata, analyzing gene functions and pathways, or performing batch gene lookups.

Quick Start

NCBI provides two main APIs for gene data access:

  1. E-utilities (Traditional): Full-featured API for all Entrez databases with flexible querying
  2. NCBI Datasets API (Newer): Optimized for gene data retrieval with simplified workflows

Choose E-utilities for complex queries and cross-database searches. Choose Datasets API for straightforward gene data retrieval with metadata and sequences in a single request.

Common Workflows

Search Genes by Symbol or Name

To search for genes by symbol or name across organisms:

  1. Use the scripts/query_gene.py script with E-utilities ESearch
  2. Specify the gene symbol and organism (e.g., "BRCA1 in human")
  3. The script returns matching Gene IDs

Example query patterns:

  • Gene symbol: insulin[gene name] AND human[organism]
  • Gene with disease: dystrophin[gene name] AND muscular dystrophy[disease]
  • Chromosome location: human[organism] AND 17q21[chromosome]

Retrieve Gene Information by ID

To fetch detailed information for known Gene IDs:

  1. Use scripts/fetch_gene_data.py with the Datasets API for comprehensive data
  2. Alternatively, use scripts/query_gene.py with E-utilities EFetch for specific formats
  3. Specify desired output format (JSON, XML, or text)

The Datasets API returns:

  • Gene nomenclature and aliases
  • Reference sequences (RefSeqs) for transcripts and proteins
  • Chromosomal location and mapping
  • Gene Ontology (GO) annotations
  • Associated publications

Read the full file on GitHub · 179 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. 2d ago First seen · 179 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A 635e02d106fd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

gene-database is a skill published in the GitHub repository synthetic-sciences/openscience (3,473 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 1,453 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

meta-paper-write

Use this meta-skill instead of answering directly when the current user asks to draft or produce a new academic/research paper or LaTeX manuscript. It uses multi-skill orchestration for manuscript workflows that need source search, citation planning, experiment or figure/table placeholders, drafting, length checks…

opensquilla/opensquilla · 125 tokens

paper-revision-author

Revise independently drafted paper sections into one coherent LaTeX body before the abstract is written.

opensquilla/opensquilla · 24 tokens

paper-section-author

Write one publication-style research-paper section as a bounded, citation-grounded LaTeX fragment from a writing plan, outline, citation plan, and optional figure/table context.

opensquilla/opensquilla · 38 tokens

meta-arxiv-daily-digest-deck

Fetch the day's top arXiv submissions in a chosen category, write a structured per-paper digest, render the digest as a PPTX deck (one slide per paper), and persist the digest to long-term memory. Use for a daily 'arxiv morning briefing' — manual fire or cron-scheduled.

opensquilla/opensquilla · 71 tokens

paper-quality-gate

Deterministic pre-compile gate for meta-paper-write. Enforces length/citation verdicts and rejects unsupported empirical-result claims when no user evidence was supplied.

opensquilla/opensquilla · 37 tokens

paper-latex-sanitizer

Deterministically normalize safe LaTeX punctuation and replace unsupported forecast magnitudes with explicit placeholders before meta-paper-write publication gates run.

opensquilla/opensquilla · 33 tokens