Research & Search
Research agent skills teach AI agents to gather and synthesize information properly: literature reviews, competitive analysis, web research with citations, and structured summaries. Each SKILL.md encodes a method, not just a prompt, so results stay consistent across runs.
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mittuled Bundle Signal BenchmarkerThis skill benchmarks product and business signals against industry standards and comparable companies. Use when asked to compare metrics to peers, validate performance against benchmarks, or assess relative market position. Also consider when leadership questions whether a metric is good or bad without external context. Suggest when investor updates need benchmark-contextualized metrics.
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codyswanngt Bundle Claude Code ActionKnowledge base for creating and configuring Claude Code Action GitHub workflows
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npbuilds Bundle Agentic ResearcherGenerate, test, and iteratively refine candidate solutions to open-ended research questions using an evolutionary loop with automated evaluation. Use when the question is generative rather than investigative — "what's the best approach to X?" rather than "is X true?" — and when candidates can be evaluated against definable criteria. Produces ranked recommendations with confidence-tagged reasoning and explicit trade-off maps.
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npbuilds Bundle Paywall StrategistSystematically work around source paywalls before tagging a claim Unverifiable. Searches for preprint mirrors (bioRxiv, SSRN, arXiv, institutional repositories), extracts available abstracts, surfaces adjacent open-access work, and generates ask-the-author email templates. Plugged into Spelunker's Reentry Protocol Level 1 — must be exhausted before escalating to Level 2 (decompose further) or tagging the claim Unverifiable.
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npbuilds Bundle Source TriangulatorVerify individual claims by finding and cross-referencing multiple independent sources. Use when an atomic claim needs evidence gathering, source quality evaluation, independence verification, and agreement/disagreement mapping. The core verification engine of the Spelunker research system.
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npbuilds Bundle Evidence SynthesizerAssemble verified evidence bundles into a structured research brief with confidence-tagged findings, evidence maps, and explicit gap reporting. Use when atomic claims have been investigated and need to be synthesized into a coherent, honest, user-facing research output with auditable confidence assessments.
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npbuilds Bundle Synthesis TranslatorConvert a Spelunker research brief into one of four target formats — executive memo, VC pitch bullets, tweet thread, or decision memo — while preserving citations and confidence tags. Spelunker has one default output (long-form brief); this skill multiplies that into the formats the user actually publishes/uses. Callable as the optional last step of Spelunker Phase 6, or standalone on any existing brief in `research/`.
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npbuilds Bundle Counterfactual ProberActive disconfirmation. Given a synthesized brief, generate "if the conclusion were false, what should we observe in the world?" predictions and search for those signatures. Stronger than passive adversarial search ("X debunked"), which only finds what others have already written. Plugged into Spelunker Phase 5 between the existing adversarial search and backpropagation. Triggered in `deep` mode by default; optional in `standard`.
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npbuilds Skill Needs ElicitorInterviews a buyer before any product research happens: jobs-to-be-done framing, MoSCoW must-haves, deal-breakers, and a budget locked before any price is seen. Use when starting a purchase decision and the real requirements are not yet pinned down — emptor's elicit phase, or standalone when someone says "help me figure out what I actually need". Produces a signed-off requirements spec with weighted criteria; performs no web searching itself.
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npbuilds Bundle Philosophy Of ScienceDirect the philosophy of science subdomain — route methodology and demarcation questions to the right specialist. Use when evaluating study design, assessing scientific methodology, distinguishing science from pseudoscience, identifying paradigmatic assumptions, or critiquing research methods.
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npbuilds Bundle Bias And Funding TracerTrace funding sources, author conflicts of interest, and institutional incentives behind a set of sources. Use when source quality alone is insufficient — when "10 sources agree" might mean "10 sources funded by the same company agree." Especially load-bearing for biotech (industry-funded trials), markets (sell-side analyst incentives), and politically charged topics. Plugged into Phase 3 of Spelunker after source-triangulator completes its sweep.
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npbuilds Bundle Root Vs Symptom TaggerPick the right root-cause method (5 Whys / Fishbone / dependency mapping / Current Reality Tree) for a problem statement based on typology and stakes, and tag each atomic claim as root or symptom. Use during binding-vow's Phase 3 decomposition. Delegates dependency mapping to research/claim-decomposer. Returns method recommendation plus per-claim root-vs-symptom tags.
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npbuilds Skill Old MastersNavigate the Old Masters market — paintings predating 1800 (broadly), attribution hierarchy discipline, dendrochronology and panel-painting science, multi-century provenance research, and the disciplines unique to this category (cradling, lining history, varnish layering, multiple-hand workshop production). Use when buying, selling, or attributing any painting from before ~1800.
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npbuilds Skill Decision JournalPersists purchase research and learns from outcomes: appends research runs to data/decision-journal.jsonl, purchases and 30-day check-ins to data/purchases.jsonl, maintains data/consumer-preferences.json, and mirrors briefs into the user's Obsidian vault via vault-writer when reachable. Use at the start of an emptor run (recall priors), at its end (persist the brief), and when /purchase-log or /purchase-review fire. Closes the calibration loop by resolving brief confidence against real satisfaction.
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npbuilds Bundle Review ForensicsScores the authenticity of a product's review corpus using a five-signal ensemble (velocity, verified-purchase ratio, rating distribution, account patterns, cross-product repetition). Use when evaluating whether crowd reviews for a specific product can be trusted as evidence — typically during emptor's verify phase, or standalone when the user asks "are these reviews fake?". Returns a per-product authenticity verdict, never a guess: signals that cannot be checked are reported as unchecked.
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npbuilds Bundle Regulatory StrategyDirect FDA/EMA pathway analysis, designation eligibility assessment, regulatory precedent research, and regulatory risk scoring to the appropriate specialist skill. Activate when evaluating a regulatory strategy for a therapeutic asset, assessing eligibility for expedited programs, or scoring regulatory risk for diligence purposes. Regulatory strategy can accelerate or derail a clinical program — this director ensures pathway choices are grounded in precedent.
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npbuilds Bundle Source Trust AtlasMaps consumer review sources to trust tiers and routes product categories to the sources worth searching. Use when planning where to research a purchase, deciding how much weight a review source deserves, or checking whether a review is too stale to trust. Called by emptor during the source-plan phase; also useful standalone when the user asks "which review sites can I trust for X?".
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npbuilds Bundle Frontier IntelligenceDirect frontier signal-scanning, mindshare quantification, data-generation monitoring, and emerging-target radar to the appropriate specialist skill. Activate when the question is "what is emerging?" — which targets and modalities are accreting attention and data before they are drug classes, how fast, and which are worth tracking. This director owns the front of the funnel: it reads the second derivative of the literature, capital, and data-engine signals and emits a ranked watchlist of candidates for the analog engine to place on the historical arc.
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ulpi-io Bundle Planning With FilesImplements Manus-style file-based planning to organize and track progress on complex tasks. Creates task_plan.md, findings.md, and progress.md. Use when asked to plan out, break down, or organize a multi-step project, research task, or any work requiring >5 tool calls. Supports automatic session recovery after /clear.
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agents-store Bundle Search ExtractWeb search and structured data extraction. This skill should be used when the user asks to search the web, extract structured data from pages into JSON, research a topic using online sources, or perform competitive analysis.
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agents-store Skill Deep ResearchMain research automation skill. 7-step algorithm for comprehensive research with 6 research types, query planning, parallel search, extraction, synthesis, and structured reporting. Use when conducting any multi-step research task.
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agents-store Skill Keyword ResearchThis skill should be used when the user asks about "keyword research", "find keywords", "keyword ideas", "search volume", "keyword difficulty", "long-tail keywords", "keyword gap analysis", "keyword strategy", or needs to discover and evaluate keywords using DataForSEO.
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agents-store Skill Search StrategiesSearch strategy guidelines — tool selection, fallback chains, query optimization, and parallel search orchestration. Use when choosing which search tools to use, handling tool failures, or optimizing search queries.
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agents-store Skill Content ExtractionContent reading and extraction guidelines — reading URLs, scraping pages, crawling sites, extracting PDFs, and taking screenshots. Use when reading web content, extracting structured data from pages, or processing documents.
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agents-store Skill Competitor AnalysisThis skill should be used when the user asks about "competitor analysis", "competitor research", "domain comparison", "who ranks for", "competitive landscape", "competitor keywords", "competitor traffic", or needs to analyze and compare domains using DataForSEO.
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ulpi-io Bundle Pr PlanPlan an open source PR contribution. Takes pr-research output and produces scope, acceptance criteria, and risk assessment. Triggers: "pr plan", "contribution plan", "plan PR", "plan contribution".
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ulpi-io Bundle Pr ResearchUpstream codebase exploration for open source contribution. Outputs contribution guidelines, PR patterns, and maintainer expectations. Triggers: "pr research", "upstream research", "contribution research", "explore upstream repo".
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ulpi-io Skill Last30daysResearch a topic from the last 30 days. Also triggered by 'last30'. Sources: Reddit, X, Bluesky, Truth Social, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Hacker News, Polymarket, web. Become an expert and write copy-paste-ready prompts.
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ulpi-io Bundle Using AgentopsMeta skill explaining the RPI workflow. Auto-injected on session start. Covers Research-Plan-Implement workflow, Knowledge Flywheel, and skill catalog.
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codyswanngt Bundle Lisa Codebase ResearchCodebase exploration and…
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mkurman Bundle Research GrantsWrite competitive research proposals for NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA, and Taiwan NSTC. Agency-specific formatting, review criteria, budget preparation, broader impacts, significance statements, innovation narratives, and compliance with submission requirements.
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mkurman Bundle Research LookupLook up current research information using the Parallel Chat API (primary) or Perplexity sonar-pro-search (academic paper searches). Automatically routes queries to the best backend. Use for finding papers, gathering research data, and verifying scientific information.
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mkurman Bundle Venue TemplatesAccess comprehensive LaTeX templates, formatting requirements, and submission guidelines for major scientific publication venues (Nature, Science, PLOS, IEEE, ACM), academic conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, CHI), research posters, and grant proposals (NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA). This skill should be used when preparing manuscripts for journal submission, conference papers, research posters, or grant proposals and need venue-specific formatting requirements and templates.
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mkurman Bundle Scholar EvaluationSystematically evaluate scholarly work using the ScholarEval framework, providing structured assessment across research quality dimensions including problem formulation, methodology, analysis, and writing with quantitative scoring and actionable feedback.
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mkurman Bundle Scientific WritingCore skill for the deep research and writing tool. Write scientific manuscripts in full paragraphs (never bullet points). Use two-stage process with (1) section outlines with key points using research-lookup then (2) convert to flowing prose. IMRAD structure, citations (APA/AMA/Vancouver), figures/tables, reporting guidelines (CONSORT/STROBE/PRISMA), for research papers and journal submissions.
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mkurman Bundle Pubmed DatabaseSearch PubMed for scientific literature, including published clinical trials. Fetch abstracts and full text. Link published research to biological databases (gene, protein, nucleotide, PubChem) to discover associations between papers and specific compounds or genes. Verify medical spelling, match raw citations, and cache result sets for bulk processing. Interfaces NCBI E-utilities and PMC BioC APIs.
Frequently asked questions
What are Research & Search agent skills?
Research agent skills teach AI agents to gather and synthesize information properly: literature reviews, competitive analysis, web research with citations, and structured summaries. Each SKILL.md encodes a method, not just a prompt, so results stay consistent across runs.
Which Research & Search skills are most installed?
Popular Research & Search skills on SkillMD right now include signal-benchmarker, claude-code-action, agentic-researcher. Rankings shift as installs change; sort this page by "Most installs" for the live list.
Do Research & Search skills work with Claude Code and Cursor?
Yes. Every skill here ships as a SKILL.md file, an open format that works in Claude Code, Claude.ai, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, and 60+ other agents. Install one with npx skillmds@latest add <owner>/<name>, or copy the file into your agent's skills directory.