# Research Agent Skills
### Research skills for academia: AI, machine learning, biology, chemistry, medicine and physics
**280+ open-source skills that turn Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and GitHub Copilot into careful research assistants.**
[](https://github.com/KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills/actions/workflows/validate.yml)
[](https://github.com/KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills/actions/workflows/skill-security.yml)
[](benchmarks/README.md)
[](https://securityscorecards.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills)
[](LICENSE)
[](https://github.com/KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills)
[Install](#install-in-30-seconds) · [Who it's for](#built-for-researchers) · [Benchmarks](#measured-not-claimed) · [Skills](#skill-catalog) · [skills.sh](https://skills.sh/kalarislabs/research-agent-skills) · [Docs](https://docs.kalarislabs.com/research-agent-skills) · [FAQ](#faq)
---
**Research Agent Skills**, maintained by **[Kalaris Labs](https://github.com/KalarisLabs)**, is a free, open-source library of [Agent Skills](https://agentskills.io) for students, researchers and research teams.
Each skill is a folder with a `SKILL.md` playbook, references and tested scripts. Your AI agent loads a skill
only when a task needs it: drafting a manuscript, formatting for *Nature* or IEEE, verifying references,
running a PRISMA systematic review, analyzing single-cell data, or answering reviewers.
It is built around the three ways AI research assistance goes wrong:
1. **AI slop.** `unslop-academic-writing` finds stock phrasing ("delves into", "pivotal role"), empty emphasis, stacked hedges and
monotone rhythm, then rewrites toward specific, evidence-backed prose in the author's own voice.
2. **Hallucinated citations.** `citation-verification` checks every reference against Crossref, OpenAlex and arXiv. On our labeled
benchmark it flagged every fabricated and corrupted reference and passed every correct one.
3. **Outdated venue rules.** Journal skills make the agent read the current author guidelines before formatting, instead of trusting memory.
## Install in 30 seconds
```bash
npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills
```
The skills.sh CLI lets you select individual skills and agent harnesses. It installs into the current project;
add `--global` for a user-level installation. To inspect all available skills first, run
`npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --list`.
Then ask your agent, for example *"Verify every reference in refs.bib"* or
*"Unslop this introduction without changing any claims"*.
Choose a starting skill for your field with a command that works today:
| Researcher | Start with |
|---|---|
| Academia across disciplines | `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill scientific-writing` |
| Machine learning | `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill ml-paper-writing` |
| Artificial intelligence | `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill evaluating-llms-harness` |
| Biology and bioinformatics | `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill scanpy` |
| Chemistry and materials | `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill rdkit` |
| Medicine and clinical research | `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill clinical-reports` |
| Physics and astronomy | `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill astropy` |
The planned npm installer will add curated bundles for these fields after its first release.
[Browse all categories](catalog/skills.json) when you need a specialist skill.
**The complete collection:** [`research-agent-skills`](skills/research-agent-skills/SKILL.md) is the
single collection entry, with an index of all 280 specialist skills. On skills.sh, each
specialist also has its own installable entry. To install the complete set into this
project for Codex, run `npx skills add KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills --skill '*' --agent codex --yes`.
Replace `codex` with your agent.
**Created by [Sayan Chowdhury](https://github.com/saynchowdhury) · [Kalaris Labs](https://github.com/KalarisLabs)**
If this saves you time, please ⭐ the repository so other researchers can find it.
[](https://github.com/KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills/stargazers)
Sponsored by [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com) for documentation.
[](https://star-history.com/#KalarisLabs/research-agent-skills&Date)