research

research is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from tslateman/duet. It costs 58 tokens per session (805 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured process for investigating technical questions. It gathers evidence from documentation, code, and current sources, then compares options and gives practical recommendations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Researching how technology works, comparing alternatives, and producing evidence-based engineering guidance.
Why use it?
It reduces guesswork when choosing libraries, APIs, frameworks, or architectural approaches.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the duet plugin — 25 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent shipped together

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/tslateman/duet/research
Any agent
npx skills add tslateman/duet --skill research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tslateman/duet

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install duet, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 25 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent.

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 research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tslateman/duet/research.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tslateman/duet/research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tslateman/duet/research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tslateman/duet/research.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 58 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 805 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 $0.00058 $0.00805
Opus 5 $0.00029 $0.00402
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00161
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00081

Measured 3d ago against content hash ef3a0c53159c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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 3d 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.

skills/research/SKILL.md · 143 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 143 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Technical Research

Overview

Systematic technical research for staff-level software engineering decisions. Gather evidence, synthesize findings, and present actionable recommendations.

Research Workflow

1. Scope the Question

Before searching, clarify:

  • What decision does this research inform?
  • What constraints exist (language, framework, team expertise)?
  • What "good enough" looks like, avoid rabbit holes

2. Gather Evidence

Use multiple sources in parallel:

Web search, current state, recent changes, community sentiment

WebSearch: "[topic] 2026" or "[library] vs [alternative]"

Documentation, authoritative specs and APIs

Context7: resolve-library-id then query-docs
WebFetch: official docs, RFCs, specifications

Codebase, existing patterns and constraints

Grep/Glob: how similar problems are solved today

3. Evaluate Sources

Weight sources by reliability:

  1. Official documentation, specs, RFCs
  2. Maintainer statements, changelogs, release notes
  3. Reputable tech blogs, conference talks
  4. Community discussions (HN, Reddit, Discord)
  5. AI-generated content, outdated tutorials

Red flags: No date, no author, SEO-heavy content, contradicts official docs

4. Synthesize Findings

Structure output for decision-making:

## Summary

[1-2 sentence answer to the core question]

## Key Findings

- Finding 1 (source)
- Finding 2 (source)
- Finding 3 (source)

## Comparison (if applicable)

| Criterion    | Option A | Option B |
| ------------ | -------- | -------- |
| [Key factor] | ...      | ...      |

## Recommendation

[Clear recommendation with rationale]

## Open Questions

[What remains uncertain, what to monitor]

5. Cite Sources

Always include sources:

Sources:

- [Official Docs](url)
- [Relevant Article](url)

Research Patterns

Library/Framework Evaluation

Investigate:

  1. Maintenance, Last release, commit frequency, issue response time
  2. Adoption, npm downloads, GitHub stars, production users
  3. Documentation, Quality, examples, migration guides
  4. Bundle size, For frontend, check bundlephobia
  5. TypeScript, Native support or @types package quality
  6. Breaking changes, Major version history, upgrade difficulty

Read the full file on GitHub · 143 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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. 3d ago First seen · 143 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A ef3a0c53159c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research is a skill published in the GitHub repository tslateman/duet (1 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 805 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 2026-08-31.