autoresearch:plan

autoresearch:plan is a skill for Claude Code from wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill. It costs 134 tokens per session (2,338 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided setup interview for planning an experimental research project. It creates a research.md file, and can optionally create evaluate.py, without running experiments.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for setting up machine-learning or other experimental projects step by step, with one question at a time and written setup artifacts.
Why use it?
It turns vague research ideas into a defined goal, success measure, search area, limits, evaluation method, and baseline before work begins.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is python scripts/init_research.py \.

Part of the autoresearch plugin — 13 skills shipped together

Good fit It is for setting up machine-learning or other experimental projects step by step, with one question at a time and written setup artifacts.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill/plan

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install autoresearch, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 13 skills.

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 autoresearch:plan

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill/plan/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill/plan)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill/plan"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill/plan/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 autoresearch:plan

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill/plan"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill/plan.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 134 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,338 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00134 $0.02338
Opus 5 $0.00067 $0.01169
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00468
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00234

Measured 10d ago against content hash af5d9d926b62, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

autoresearch:plan scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 10d 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.

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

subprocess.run(["python", "TARGET_SCRIPT.py"], check=True)
skills/plan/SKILL.md · 279 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 279 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

autoresearch:plan — Research Setup Wizard

A 7-step interview that produces a complete research.md (and optionally evaluate.py) before a single experiment runs. The wizard is conversational — ask each step, wait for the answer, then proceed. Do not batch all questions at once.

Wizard Protocol

One step at a time. Present the step title and question(s). Wait for the user's response. Summarize what you recorded ("Got it — I'll set metric: accuracy, direction: maximize"). Then proceed to the next step.

Do not skip steps. Each step produces a concrete artifact that feeds Step 7. If the user's answer is vague, probe once for specificity, then record your best interpretation and note it as an assumption.


Step 1 — Goal Clarification

Probe for specificity. Vague goals produce useless research loops.

Ask:

  1. "What are you trying to improve or discover?"
  2. "What does success look like in concrete terms — not 'better', but what number or outcome?"
  3. "Is there anything this work must NOT break?"

Probe rules:

  • If the answer contains words like "better", "faster", "improve" without a reference point → ask "compared to what baseline?"
  • If no domain is mentioned → ask "what system/file/model/prompt are we working on?"
  • If multiple goals are stated → ask "if you could only achieve one of these, which one?"

Record: goal_statement (1-2 sentences, specific and measurable)


Step 2 — Metric Definition

What to measure, how to measure it, and what direction counts as progress.

Ask:

  1. "What is the single number that determines if this experiment succeeded or failed?"
  2. "Are you maximizing or minimizing it?"
  3. "What value would make you stop and say 'we're done'? That's the target."
  4. "Is this metric noisy? (e.g., varies between runs due to randomness or timing)"

Guide the user if stuck:

  • Performance → latency (ms), throughput (req/s), memory (MB) — direction: minimize
  • Quality → accuracy (%), F1, LLM-judge score (1-10) — direction: maximize
  • Cost → tokens, dollars, lines of code — direction: minimize

Read the full file on GitHub · 279 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. 10d ago First seen · 279 lines · 134 tokens per session scan A af5d9d926b62

Subscribe to this mod's changes

autoresearch:plan is a skill published in the GitHub repository wjgoarxiv/autoresearch-skill (32 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 134 tokens to every session and 2,338 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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