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 skills add tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit --skill research-swarmgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kitWrote 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/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/research-swarm)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/research-swarm"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/research-swarm/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/research-swarm"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit/research-swarm.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" 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 | $0.00074 | $0.01809 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00037 | $0.00905 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00015 | $0.00362 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00181 |
Grade A, and why
research-swarm 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 yesterday.
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 — 80 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
/research-swarm — an argument map for any hypothesis (a swarm of research agents)
🧒 When reporting to a non-technical operator: end with a child-simple "In plain words" recap in their language. ⚖️ Doctrine: this skill IS the operational arm of
protocol-epistemic-neutrality-fringe-research. NEVER judge or mock the hypothesis. Consensus ≠ truth. Build a map of arguments + confidence — an investigation, not a verdict. Bounded byoperating-agreementsafety invariants (no illegal/harm/bypass/fraud).
When to use
The operator hands a hypothesis — frontier science (antigravity, perpetual motion, anomalous materials, radical longevity, models of consciousness/time), an unusual business model (DAO/network states, no-employee AI co, token labor markets), or a controversial/stigmatized vertical (adult, gaming, gambling). Goal: a balanced, grounded argument map, not a yes/no.
The 5 lenses (run as a parallel swarm)
- Consensus — steelman the current mainstream/established view. What does well-replicated science / the market actually hold, and why.
- Skeptic — strongest arguments AGAINST. Where the idea breaks, hidden assumptions, falsification points, known failure modes.
- Frontier — strongest arguments FOR. Steelman the believer: what would have to be true, adjacent emerging evidence, why it's not obviously impossible.
- Historian — precedents and base rates. Ideas once dismissed then vindicated (and once hyped then debunked); the historical analog for THIS idea.
- Experimental-Design — what measurement/experiment would confirm or refute, the cheapest decisive test, what data to gather first.
Each lens does light, targeted web grounding (WebSearch/WebFetch) — claims should be evidenced, not just model priors — but stays token-aware. The synthesis NEVER returns a verdict; it returns a confidence tier + open questions.
Control node — Verifier-Calibrator (added 2026-06-15, via Alpha R+DR)
After synthesis, one Verifier-Calibrator node runs (the swarm's acceptance function, not another opinion). It (1) audits the strongest for/against claims — supported / partial / unsupported, (2) re-derives the confidence tier from evidence (support density + cross-lens agreement), not vibe, lowering tiers that rest on unsupported or single-lens claims, and (3) may abstain: the new tier insufficient is a first-class honest answer when evidence is too thin to place the idea on the established→fringe axis. The calibrated tier + claim audit + flags surface in the note and dashboard. This is the DR-recommended control plane over the 5-lens content plane (gaps: no verifier / qualitative-not-calibrated tiers / no abstain lane). Decision: vault 02-Decisions\decision-research-swarm-v2-upgrade.
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.
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.
- yesterday First seen · 80 lines · 74 tokens per session scan A 2d37b9e2c076
research-swarm is a skill published in the GitHub repository tonydzi/second-brain-starter-kit (6 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 1,809 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-09-09.
Other skills, from other repositories
wiki-ingest
Ingest supplied source material into an Obsidian vault with provenance and claim tracking: pasted text, files staged in the selected vault's inbox or .raw archive, or explicitly approved URLs. Use for a single source or bounded batch, not for saving an assistant answer. Triggers: ingest, ingest this file, ingest this…
autoresearch
Run a bounded, source-grounded research loop, draft a cited dossier, and optionally propose a separately reviewed canonical vault merge. Use when the user wants autonomous or deep research that may access the public web. Triggers: /autoresearch, autoresearch, research this topic, deep dive into, investigate, find…
canvas
Create, inspect, and update Obsidian JSON Canvas boards with text, file, link, group, and edge nodes. Use for canvas status, canvas lists, visual maps, zones, spatial layouts, adding vault notes or media to a .canvas file, and requests such as create canvas, add to canvas, or put this on the canvas.
wiki-retrieve
Build and query a vault-local contextual BM25 retrieval index with optional multilingual Nomic cosine reranking; use for retrieve, hybrid retrieval, BM25, rerank, contextual retrieval, chunk search, vault search, semantic search, find relevant passages, or retrieval diagnostics. Derived caches stay under .vault-meta…
wiki
Initialize, adopt, and route work for a separate Obsidian knowledge vault through the portable claude-obsidian core. Use for vault setup, scaffolding, workspace selection, cross-project configuration, or choosing the correct wiki sub-skill. Triggers: /wiki, set up wiki, scaffold vault, create knowledge base, adopt…
defuddle
Plan and, with explicit network consent, use an optional external Defuddle cleaner to extract article-like HTTPS pages as Markdown. Use for defuddle, clean this URL, strip page clutter, readable Markdown from a web page, or preparing a web source for later wiki ingestion.