What is research-lookup?

A research lookup guide for finding and checking current scientific or technical information. It uses saved searches and available search tools to gather papers, evidence, citations, and background material.

Use it to find papers, investigate current findings, gather research data, verify scientific claims, or locate sources for technical documentation. It can search literature and prepare source material for later writing.

It reduces the need to search many sources manually and helps verify claims before they are used in research or technical writing. It also distinguishes ordinary web searches from deeper academic research.

research-lookup — Skill for Claude Code by TTAWDTT

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 research-lookup

Clone the repo

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

Made for: Claude Code.

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/research-lookup/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ttawdtt/elegant-researcher-skill/research-lookup)

Your own site

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

Per session 91 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 5,614 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan C 2 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin 86% 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	$0.00091	$0.05614
Opus 5	$0.00046	$0.02807
Sonnet 5	$0.00018	$0.01123
Haiku 4.5	$0.00009	$0.00561

Measured 12d ago against content hash c00556a48282, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

research-lookup scanned grade C with 2 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 6 executable files (examples.py, lookup.py, research_lookup.py, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

curl -fsSL https://parallel.ai/install.sh | bash

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -fsSL https://parallel.ai/install.sh | bash

Origin

This is a copy

86% identical to research-lookup — 78 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/research-lookup/SKILL.md · 553 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 553 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Research Information Lookup

Overview

This skill provides real-time research information lookup with two execution paths:

Direct CLI path: parallel-cli search is the recommended fast path for standard web searches when the CLI is installed and authenticated. Run it explicitly and save JSON to sources/.
Python API helper: research_lookup.py routes only between the Parallel Chat API and Perplexity/OpenRouter. It does not call parallel-cli internally.

Use the CLI path first for ordinary literature/background searches. Use research_lookup.py when you explicitly need deep synthesis, academic-focused Perplexity search, batch API lookup, or a CLI fallback is unavailable.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need:

Current Research Information: Latest studies, papers, and findings
Literature Verification: Check facts, statistics, or claims against current research
Background Research: Gather context and supporting evidence for scientific writing
Citation Sources: Find relevant papers and studies to cite
Technical Documentation: Look up specifications, protocols, or methodologies
Market/Industry Data: Current statistics, trends, competitive intelligence
Recent Developments: Emerging trends, breakthroughs, announcements

Visual Enhancement with Scientific Schematics

When creating documents with this skill, always consider adding scientific diagrams and schematics to enhance visual communication.

If your document does not already contain schematics or diagrams:

Use the scientific-schematics skill to generate AI-powered publication-quality diagrams
Simply describe your desired diagram in natural language

python scripts/generate_schematic.py "your diagram description" -o figures/output.png

Backend Selection

Select the path explicitly:

Routing Logic

Query arrives
    |
    +-- Is parallel-cli installed and this is a standard search?
    |       YES --> Run parallel-cli search directly and save JSON to sources/
    |
    +-- Need deep synthesis or API-routed batch output?
    |       YES --> Run research_lookup.py --force-backend parallel, or auto-route
    |
    +-- Need academic Perplexity search for papers/DOIs?
    |       YES --> Run research_lookup.py --force-backend perplexity, or auto-route
    |
    +-- No backend/API key available?
            --> Use available web search tools and save sources manually

Read the full file on GitHub · 553 lines

Files

What ships with it

8 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 · 553 lines · 91 tokens per session scan C c00556a48282

Subscribe to this mod's changes

research-lookup is a skill published in the GitHub repository TTAWDTT/elegant-researcher-skill (5 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 5,614 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (downloads and executes remote code, makes network calls). It is 86% identical to research-lookup, differing in 78 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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research-lookup