bio-sequence-similarity

bio-sequence-similarity is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from thesecondfox/skill. It costs 60 tokens per session (2,511 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to finding related DNA or protein sequences when ordinary BLAST searches are not sensitive enough. It explains iterative searches, which learn from earlier matches, and profile HMMs, which model patterns in a sequence family.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find orthologs, distant homologs, or members of a protein family with PSI-BLAST, HMMER, and reciprocal best-hit analysis.
Why use it?
It helps detect distant relatives that a single standard similarity search may miss. This is useful when sequence similarity is weak but biological relatedness is still possible.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/thesecondfox/skill/bio-database-access-sequence-similarity
Any agent
npx skills add thesecondfox/skill --skill bio-database-access-sequence-similarity
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/thesecondfox/skill

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 bio-sequence-similarity

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thesecondfox/skill/bio-database-access-sequence-similarity.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/thesecondfox/skill/bio-database-access-sequence-similarity)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thesecondfox/skill/bio-database-access-sequence-similarity"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thesecondfox/skill/bio-database-access-sequence-similarity.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 60 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,511 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00060 $0.02511
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.01256
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00502
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00251

Measured 5d ago against content hash cb79e7cf6b25, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bio-sequence-similarity scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 5d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

wget https://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/Pfam/current_release/Pfam-A.hmm.gz
Common_Skills/bio-database-access-sequence-similarity/SKILL.md · 339 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 339 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Version Compatibility

Reference examples tested with: BioPython 1.83+, NCBI BLAST+ 2.15+

Before using code patterns, verify installed versions match. If versions differ:

  • Python: pip show <package> then help(module.function) to check signatures
  • CLI: <tool> --version then <tool> --help to confirm flags

If code throws ImportError, AttributeError, or TypeError, introspect the installed package and adapt the example to match the actual API rather than retrying.

Sequence Similarity Searches

Advanced methods for finding homologous sequences beyond standard BLAST.

"Find distant homologs" → Use iterative search (PSI-BLAST) or profile HMMs (HMMER) to detect remote sequence similarity that standard BLAST misses.

  • CLI: psiblast -query seq.fa -db nr -num_iterations 3 or hmmsearch profile.hmm seqdb
  • Python: NcbipsiblastCommandline() (BioPython)

PSI-BLAST (Position-Specific Iterated BLAST)

Builds a position-specific scoring matrix (PSSM) through iterations to find distant homologs.

Basic PSI-BLAST

psiblast -query protein.fasta -db nr -out results.txt -num_iterations 3

Save PSSM for Reuse

psiblast -query protein.fasta -db nr \
    -out results.txt \
    -out_pssm pssm.asn \
    -out_ascii_pssm pssm.txt \
    -num_iterations 5

Use Existing PSSM

psiblast -in_pssm pssm.asn -db nr -out results.txt

Output Format

psiblast -query protein.fasta -db nr \
    -out results.txt \
    -outfmt 6 \
    -num_iterations 3 \
    -inclusion_ethresh 0.001

Key Parameters

psiblast -query protein.fasta -db nr \
    -num_iterations 5 \
    -inclusion_ethresh 0.001 \
    -evalue 0.01 \
    -num_threads 8 \
    -out results.txt

PSI-BLAST Parameters

Parameter Default Description
-num_iterations 1 Number of iterations
-inclusion_ethresh 0.002 E-value for PSSM inclusion
-evalue 10 E-value threshold for reporting
-num_threads 1 CPU threads

Read the full file on GitHub · 339 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. 5d ago First seen · 339 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A cb79e7cf6b25

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bio-sequence-similarity is a skill published in the GitHub repository thesecondfox/skill (3 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 2,511 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

instrument-data-to-allotrope

Convert laboratory instrument output files (PDF, CSV, Excel, TXT) to Allotrope Simple Model (ASM) JSON format or flattened 2D CSV. Use this skill when scientists need to standardize instrument data for LIMS systems, data lakes, or downstream analysis. Supports auto-detection of instrument types. Outputs include full…

anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins · 123 tokens

exploratory-data-analysis

Perform bounded, local exploratory analysis of explicitly supported scientific files. Use for redacted CSV/TSV/JSON profiles; optional NumPy, HDF5, FASTA/FASTQ, and basic image metadata inspection; missingness/leakage audits; outlier and transformation sensitivity; and rigorous EDA report scaffolds. Other domain…

K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills · 83 tokens

matlab

Build, review, migrate, and safely plan MATLAB or GNU Octave numerical workflows, including arrays, tabular/time data, tests, projects, graphics, MAT files, and explicit Python interoperability.

K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills · 42 tokens

phylogenetics

Build and analyze phylogenetic trees using MAFFT (multiple alignment), IQ-TREE 2 (maximum likelihood), and FastTree (fast NJ/ML). Visualize with ETE3 or FigTree. For evolutionary analysis, microbial genomics, viral phylodynamics, protein family analysis, and molecular clock studies.

K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills · 68 tokens

research-engineer

An uncompromising Academic Research Engineer. Operates with absolute scientific rigor, objective criticism, and zero flair. Focuses on theoretical correctness, formal verification, and optimal implementation across any required technology.

davila7/claude-code-templates · 43 tokens

mapping-to-snomed

Maps clinical concept spans extracted by OpenMed to SNOMED CT concepts through a USER-SUPPLIED terminology server (the user's own Ontoserver, Snowstorm, or UMLS/UTS), never a bundled vocabulary. Use when the user wants to code findings, disorders, procedures, body structures, or substances to SNOMED CT, run an ECL…

maziyarpanahi/openmed · 205 tokens