What is brainstorming-research-ideas?

A structured guide for finding and developing research ideas. It uses several ways of examining a problem to move from a vague question or stalled project toward a research proposal.

Use it when starting a research area, changing direction, getting unstuck, preparing a brainstorming session, or looking for gaps in a field.

It gives researchers a repeatable way to generate directions and identify less-explored opportunities instead of relying only on free-form brainstorming.

brainstorming-research-ideas — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by TTAW

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 TTAWDTT/elegant-researcher-skill --skill brainstorming-research-ideas

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TTAWDTT/elegant-researcher-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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ttawdtt/elegant-researcher-skill/brainstorming-research-ideas/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ttawdtt/elegant-researcher-skill/brainstorming-research-ideas)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ttawdtt/elegant-researcher-skill/brainstorming-research-ideas"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ttawdtt/elegant-researcher-skill/brainstorming-research-ideas/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ttawdtt/elegant-researcher-skill/brainstorming-research-ideas"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ttawdtt/elegant-researcher-skill/brainstorming-research-ideas.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 4,182 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 98% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00043	$0.04182
Opus 5	$0.00022	$0.02091
Sonnet 5	$0.00009	$0.00836
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00418

Measured 12d ago against content hash 9c8dd9b8b887, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

brainstorming-research-ideas 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 12d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

98% identical to brainstorming-research-ideas — 2 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/brainstorming-research-ideas/SKILL.md · 385 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 385 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Idea Brainstorming

Structured frameworks for discovering the next research idea. This skill provides ten complementary ideation lenses that help researchers move from vague curiosity to concrete, defensible research proposals. Each framework targets a different cognitive mode—use them individually or combine them for comprehensive exploration.

When to Use This Skill

Starting a new research direction and need structured exploration
Feeling stuck on a current project and want fresh angles
Evaluating whether a half-formed idea has real potential
Preparing for a brainstorming session with collaborators
Transitioning between research areas and seeking high-leverage entry points
Reviewing a field and looking for underexplored gaps

Do NOT use this skill when:

You already have a well-defined research question and need execution guidance
You need help with experimental design or methodology (use domain-specific skills)
You want a literature review (use the bundled research-lookup skill)

Core Ideation Frameworks

1. Problem-First vs. Solution-First Thinking

Research ideas originate from two distinct modes. Knowing which mode you are in prevents a common failure: building solutions that lack real problems, or chasing problems without feasible approaches.

Problem-First (pain point → method):

Start with a concrete failure, bottleneck, or unmet need
Naturally yields impactful work because the motivation is intrinsic
Risk: may converge on incremental fixes rather than paradigm shifts

Solution-First (new capability → application):

Start with a new tool, insight, or technique seeking application
Often drives breakthroughs by unlocking previously impossible approaches
Risk: "hammer looking for a nail"—solution may lack genuine demand

Workflow:

Write down your idea in one sentence
Classify it: Is this problem-first or solution-first?
If problem-first → verify the problem matters (who suffers? how much?)
If solution-first → identify at least two genuine problems it addresses
For either mode, articulate the gap: what cannot be done today that this enables?

Read the full file on GitHub · 385 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.

12d ago First seen · 385 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 9c8dd9b8b887

Subscribe to this mod's changes

brainstorming-research-ideas is a skill published in the GitHub repository TTAWDTT/elegant-researcher-skill (5 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 4,182 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 98% identical to brainstorming-research-ideas, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Creative Thinking Planning Problem Discovery Research Research Ideation Research Strategy brainstorming