rusen-research

rusen-research

Personal Claude Code plugin bundling a research workflow for the rusen-brain Obsidian vault.

The plugin is named rusen-research. The repo also acts as a single-plugin marketplace, so installation is a two-line claude plugin marketplace add + claude plugin install.

Skills

Research workflow (AI / ML reading)

Skill	Description
lit-research	Orienting survey of a new research area — discover the landscape, cluster by method / finding / theory / problem framing, produce an executive overview. First-touch skill when entering a new topic.
paper-triage	Fast SKIM/READ/DEEP/SKIP verdict for a paper from arxiv, Zotero, DOI, or a PDF path.
paper-notes	Turn a paper (or a Zotero collection/tag) into Article Notes in the rusen-brain vault. For ML/AI papers, also produces an ML Context enrichment block (benchmarks vs SOTA, code, compute, follow-ups, criticisms). Pass mode=enrich-only to produce just the enrichment block without writing a note.
lit-review	Synthesize a literature review from a set of papers into a vault note: thematic clusters, comparison, synthesis, gaps.
citation-trace	Explore the citation graph around a seed paper — forward, backward, or both — with Zotero and vault cross-reference.
idea-deep-dive	Explore the literature around a research question or hypothesis; cluster findings as supporting / contradicting / adjacent / tangential.

Vault & tooling primitives

Skill	Description
obsidian-cli	Interact with an open Obsidian vault via the obsidian CLI — read, create, search, manage notes, or develop plugins.
vaultdb	Query, mutate, and traverse Obsidian vaults using vaultdb — a Rust CLI that treats markdown folders as a database with a citation graph.

General

Skill	Description
context-init	Explore an unfamiliar codebase in read-only mode and produce a concise onboarding report.

Commands

Slash commands invoked explicitly with /<plugin>:<command>:

Command	Description
/rusen-research:think	Enter Thinking Buddy mode — Socratic, no first-draft generation, explain-back required, predict-before-reveal. A friction-on learning mode designed to use AI to sharpen the user rather than to ship faster output. Optional argument: a topic to seed the session (e.g. /rusen-research:think B-trees vs B+ trees). Exit by saying ship mode or just answer.

Shared design principles

Skills in the research workflow group follow strict conventions:

1. Always ask, never default. If the user hasn't specified a parameter, the skill asks before proceeding — it doesn't silently pick a default. This is an explicit top-of-skill invariant.
2. Canonical identifier is the Zotero citation key. Accept arxiv IDs, DOIs, and PDF paths; normalize internally.
3. Vault writes go through /vaultdb and /obsidian-cli. The research skills orchestrate; they don't reinvent vault machinery.
4. Body style matches the vault: encyclopedic prose with dense [[wiki-links]], not bullet dumps. Vault frontmatter respects the 3-tag schema (type/X + topic/Y + source/Z).
5. Cross-skill hand-offs are explicit. paper-triage → paper-notes; idea-deep-dive → citation-trace → lit-review. Skills name each other in their output "recommended next moves."

Layout

rusen-agent-skills/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   ├── plugin.json          # plugin manifest
│   └── marketplace.json     # one-plugin marketplace pointing at "./"
├── skills/
│   ├── citation-trace/SKILL.md
│   ├── context-init/SKILL.md
│   ├── idea-deep-dive/SKILL.md
│   ├── lit-research/SKILL.md
│   ├── lit-review/SKILL.md
│   ├── obsidian-cli/SKILL.md
│   ├── paper-notes/SKILL.md
│   ├── paper-triage/SKILL.md
│   └── vaultdb/SKILL.md
├── commands/
│   └── think.md             # /rusen-research:think — Thinking Buddy mode
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

Installing

# 1. Add this repo as a marketplace (one time)
claude plugin marketplace add https://github.com/rusenbb/rusen-agent-skills

# 2. Install the plugin
claude plugin install rusen-research@rusen-research

# 3. Restart Claude Code

Skills will appear under the rusen-research: namespace (e.g. rusen-research:paper-triage).

To install from a local clone instead:

git clone https://github.com/rusenbb/rusen-agent-skills ~/code/rusen-agent-skills
claude plugin marketplace add ~/code/rusen-agent-skills
claude plugin install rusen-research@rusen-research

Changes to skill files take effect in the current Claude Code session without restart.