research-skills

research-skills

A Claude Code plugin: a suite of agent skills for social-science research workflows (R + targets primary, Python + marimo later).

Adapted from Matt Pocock's skills and re-targeted at research artifacts (analysis plans, ADRs, data validation, probes) instead of software-product artifacts (PRDs, features, tests).

The suite serves two project shapes equally: papers built around a research question, and standalone dataset-creation projects that scrape and combine sources into a released dataset.

Status

Design complete, implementation in progress. See PLAN.md for the full design and build sequence.

Skills

Shipped so far:

• setup-research-skills — one-time per-repo setup. Writes the ## Agent skills block to CLAUDE.md, seeds docs/agents/*.md, CONTEXT.md, and docs/adr/0000-template.md, and creates the GitHub labels (four state + the epic and autonomous-ok kind labels).
• grill-with-docs-research — Socratic grilling session that stress-tests a research plan against the project's recorded language (CONTEXT.md glossary / variables / population) and methodology ADRs. Writes inline updates as terms and decisions crystallise.
• to-analysis-plan — synthesises the current conversation + CONTEXT.md + ADRs into a numbered analysis-plan file at docs/plans/NNNN-slug.md. Versioned snapshots (successors cite predecessors); does NOT interview; surfaces gaps as a first-class "Open questions" section. Offers once to also create a top-level GitHub epic issue.
• to-issues-research — decomposes the latest analysis plan into a DAG of GitHub Issues using Depends on:, sized so each issue is plausibly one session of work. Applies state labels and the autonomous-ok kind label per task category, walks the plan's Open questions item-by-item, and populates (or offers to create) the matching epic's Children: list.

Coming next (in build order — see PLAN.md §6): run the thin slice on a real research project before deepening any single skill. The full 14-skill catalog is in PLAN.md §4.

Install

In any Claude Code session:

/plugin marketplace add fdhidalgo/research_skills
/plugin install research-skills@research-skills

This adds the repo as a marketplace, then installs the four skills above. Run /plugin marketplace update research-skills to pull the latest.

License

0BSD — public-domain-equivalent, no attribution required.