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.
npx agentmods add skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-enginenpx skills add TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine --skill idea-enginegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TobiasBlask/open-paper-machineWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-engine)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-engine"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/idea-engine.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>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 | $0.00107 | $0.02083 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00053 | $0.01042 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00021 | $0.00417 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00011 | $0.00208 |
Grade A, and why
idea-engine 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 6d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 214 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Idea Engine — Phase 0: Is This Paper Worth Writing?
Purpose
Most AI tools help you write papers. This engine helps you decide which papers to write.
The current paper machine takes any topic and produces. This engine adds the missing gate: Phase 0 — Is this paper the right use of my time?
Great research starts with taste, strategic problem selection, honest self-evaluation, and knowing when to kill your darlings.
When to Activate
- User runs
/evaluate-idea [topic] - User asks "is this worth pursuing?", "should I write this paper?"
- Phase 0 of the
/write-paperpipeline (before Reconnaissance) - User wants to compare multiple research directions
- User questions whether to continue an ongoing project
The 8 Research Strategy Principles (RS1-RS8)
Reference: principles/research-strategy.md for full details.
Problem Selection
- RS1 (Novelty Test): If you don't do this, how many months until someone else does?
- RS2 (Conclusion-First Test): Can you write a compelling conclusion without doing the work?
- RS3 (Nugget Test): Can you state the key insight in one sentence?
Execution Strategy
- RS4 (Fail Fast): Start with the sub-problem most likely to kill the project.
- RS5 (Kill Early): A working project with low impact is worse than a killed project.
- RS6 (Unreasonable Effort): Strengthen "sometimes" to "usually" — but only AFTER RS4 and RS5.
Strategic Positioning
- RS7 (Comparative Advantage): Research space is high-dimensional; find your unique corner.
- RS8 (Timing Awareness): Impact = skill x domain importance at this moment.
The 6-Phase Orchestration Pipeline
Phase 1: SEED — Understand the Problem Space
Goal: Gather enough context to brainstorm and evaluate intelligently.
- Check for prior evaluations in
research-evaluations/*.md- If KILL exists: check whether reasons still hold
- If PARK exists: check whether revisit conditions are met
- Brief interview (3-5 questions max, skip what's already answered):
- What's the problem space? What's bugging you about it?
- What's your background/expertise relevant to this?
- Any constraints (timeline, venue, data availability)?
- What would success look like?
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.
- 6d ago First seen · 214 lines · 107 tokens per session scan A 6dd6d162eb5a
idea-engine is a skill published in the GitHub repository TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine (18 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 107 tokens to every session and 2,083 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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