xmum-research-advisor

xmum-research-advisor is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ViryaZheng/xmum-application-skills. It costs 42 tokens per session (1,279 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Advice for XMUM applicants preparing for research-focused master's or doctoral applications. It covers authentic research experience, supervisor matching, proposals, and contacting potential supervisors.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to assess research experience, identify suitable supervisors, prepare a research proposal, plan cold emails, and track application risks and next actions.
Why use it?
It helps applicants distinguish genuine research preparation from paid or inflated credentials and organise evidence for their applications.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to assess research experience, identify suitable supervisors, prepare a research proposal, plan cold emails, and track application risks and next actions.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/viryazheng/xmum-application-skills/xmum-research-advisor
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 ViryaZheng/xmum-application-skills --skill xmum-research-advisor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ViryaZheng/xmum-application-skills

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.

agentmods badge for xmum-research-advisor

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/viryazheng/xmum-application-skills/xmum-research-advisor/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/viryazheng/xmum-application-skills/xmum-research-advisor)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/viryazheng/xmum-application-skills/xmum-research-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/viryazheng/xmum-application-skills/xmum-research-advisor/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for xmum-research-advisor

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/viryazheng/xmum-application-skills/xmum-research-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/viryazheng/xmum-application-skills/xmum-research-advisor.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,279 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 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 5.1 $0.00042 $0.01279
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.00639
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00256
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00128

Measured 12d ago against content hash e75964b06a78, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

xmum-research-advisor 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.

skills/xmum-research-advisor/SKILL.md · 127 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 127 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

XMUM Research Advisor

Purpose

Use this skill for research-background planning and MPhil/PhD-style applications. It helps the applicant choose authentic, verifiable research work over paid packaging or inflated credentials.

Shared Application Workspace

Before substantial research-advising work, check the current workspace for application-profile.md and application-tracker.md. If present, read them first, reconcile them with the latest user message, and treat them as the current source of truth.

Use application-profile.md for stable research evidence, methods, supervisors, outputs, projects, and recommendation options. Use application-tracker.md for supervisor lists, target programs, proposal status, contact dates, replies, risks, and next actions. If a supervisor or research direction is added, update or propose updates to the tracker.

Warn the applicant when a "research product" has these signs:

  • Short camp or lecture series marketed as serious research.
  • Famous professor branding with little real supervision.
  • Guaranteed paper publication, especially with extra publication or page fees.
  • Weak venue, unclear peer review, or a paper the applicant cannot explain technically.
  • No real dataset, code, lab work, experiment, literature synthesis, or methodological contribution.
  • Recommendation provided as a certificate or PDF rather than submitted through the official referee system.
  • The supervisor cannot credibly verify the applicant's work through an institutional channel.
  • The project is open to participants without relevant prerequisites and assigns no real technical task.

Core test: can the applicant truthfully explain the question, method, result, and personal contribution, and can a real supervisor verify it?

Preferred Research Paths

Recommend authentic routes first:

  • Ask XMUM faculty for research assistantship, FYP extension, lab/project participation, or directed reading.
  • Start earlier than application season, especially for MPhil, PhD, or US applications.
  • Build continuity: course -> project -> FYP/research -> recommendation -> statement.
  • If the applicant has access to a real university lab or research group, join only when actual tasks are available.
  • Use summer schools only when they are official, credit-bearing, or genuinely skill-building.
  • Prefer a small real project over a polished but hollow paid credential.

Read the full file on GitHub · 127 lines

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. 12d ago First seen · 127 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A e75964b06a78

Subscribe to this mod's changes

xmum-research-advisor is a skill published in the GitHub repository ViryaZheng/xmum-application-skills (2 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 1,279 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.

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