iterative:research

iterative:research is a skill for Claude Code from tmchow/tmc-marketplace. It costs 52 tokens per session (1,524 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research workflow for answering unresolved questions about a project, such as existing solutions, outside limits, or competing approaches.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate questions from a product requirements document or a user, including prior art, technical constraints, and competitors.
Why use it?
It helps turn unknown requirements into researched answers before planning or building software.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions subagents; names the AskUserQuestion tool; mentions Claude Code.

Part of the iterative-engineering plugin — 12 skills, 18 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to investigate questions from a product requirements document or a user, including prior art, technical constraints, and competitors.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tmchow/tmc-marketplace/research
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 tmchow/tmc-marketplace --skill research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tmchow/tmc-marketplace

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install iterative-engineering, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 skills, 18 agents.

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 iterative:research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmchow/tmc-marketplace/research/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmchow/tmc-marketplace/research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmchow/tmc-marketplace/research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmchow/tmc-marketplace/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for iterative:research

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmchow/tmc-marketplace/research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmchow/tmc-marketplace/research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,524 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 $0.00052 $0.01524
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00762
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00305
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00152

Measured 10d ago against content hash 1ee4d195596e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

iterative: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 10d 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.

plugins/iterative-engineering/skills/research/SKILL.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research

Research open questions from a PRD or a user-provided set of questions. Categorize each question, spawn parallel research subagents for investigatable items, synthesize findings, and update the PRD.

This skill resolves unknowns where the answer exists somewhere and needs to be found — prior art, external constraints, codebase patterns, competitive landscape. For unknowns about visual design, UX, or interaction feel, use iterative:design-exploration instead.

When to Use

  • After iterative:brainstorming produces a PRD with open questions that can be answered through research
  • When the user has specific questions to investigate before planning
  • When scope, requirements, or direction questions need answers before tech planning can proceed
  • Can be invoked standalone with a list of questions (no PRD required)

Key Principles

  1. Categorize before investigating — Not all questions belong here. Technical implementation questions (how to query X, which API to use) belong in tech planning's codebase exploration. Questions about visual design or interaction feel belong in iterative:design-exploration. This skill handles scope, requirements, external research, and prior art questions.
  2. Parallel research — Spawn independent research subagents for each question. Questions are typically unrelated and benefit from concurrent investigation.
  3. Update the source of truth — When a PRD exists, findings should update it directly. Answered questions move out of Open Questions; new constraints become requirements.
  4. Present before committing — Show findings and proposed PRD changes to the user for approval before updating the document.

Workflow

Phase 1: Gather Questions

  1. If invoked with a PRD path: Read the PRD's Open Questions section. Extract all tagged questions.
  2. If invoked with user-provided questions: Use the questions as provided.
  3. If no input: Ask the user for either a PRD path or a set of questions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 lines

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. 10d ago First seen · 109 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 1ee4d195596e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

iterative:research is a skill published in the GitHub repository tmchow/tmc-marketplace (22 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 1,524 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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