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Best Research Skills for AI Agents
804 Research skills for AI coding assistants — ranked by popularity.
This collection provides modular research skills for AI agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex. These tools allow developers to automate data extraction, systematic literature reviews, and market analysis directly within their IDE. Whether you are building an automated patent researcher, a technical content generator, or a competitive intelligence tool, these skills offer specific interfaces for complex tasks. You will find utilities for processing raw files—such as converting PDFs and documents to Markdown—alongside domain-specific search agents for platforms like arXiv or PubMed. Each skill provides a standardized set of instructions to turn an AI into a focused research assistant. Use these to bridge the gap between unstructured data sources and actionable insights in your projects. This repository focuses on functional, repeatable tasks that improve the quality of research-oriented AI workflows.
Top Research skills
pdf-to-markdown
aliceisjustplaying
Convert entire PDF documents to clean, structured Markdown for full context loading. Use this skill when the user wants to extract ALL text from a PDF into context (not grep/search), when discussing or analyzing PDF content in full, when the user mentions "load the whole PDF", "bring the PDF into context", "read the entire PDF", or when partial extraction/grepping would miss important context. This is the preferred method for PDF text extraction over page-by-page or grep approaches.
literature-review
K-Dense-AI
Conduct comprehensive, systematic literature reviews using multiple academic databases (PubMed, arXiv, bioRxiv, Semantic Scholar, etc.). This skill should be used when conducting systematic literature reviews, meta-analyses, research synthesis, or comprehensive literature searches across biomedical, scientific, and technical domains. Creates professionally formatted markdown documents and PDFs with verified citations in multiple citation styles (APA, Nature, Vancouver, etc.).
markitdown
K-Dense-AI
Convert various file formats (PDF, Office documents, images, audio, web content, structured data) to Markdown optimized for LLM processing. Use when converting documents to markdown, extracting text from PDFs/Office files, transcribing audio, performing OCR on images, extracting YouTube transcripts, or processing batches of files. Supports 20+ formats including DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, HTML, EPUB, CSV, JSON, images with OCR, and audio with transcription.
scientific-writing
K-Dense-AI
Write scientific manuscripts. IMRAD structure, citations (APA/AMA/Vancouver), figures/tables, reporting guidelines (CONSORT/STROBE/PRISMA), abstracts, for research papers and journal submissions.
openalex-database
davila7
Query and analyze scholarly literature using the OpenAlex database. This skill should be used when searching for academic papers, analyzing research trends, finding works by authors or institutions, tracking citations, discovering open access publications, or conducting bibliometric analysis across 240M+ scholarly works. Use for literature searches, research output analysis, citation analysis, and academic database queries.
linkedin-sales-navigator-alt
OneWave-AI
Build targeted prospect lists by analyzing LinkedIn profiles, extracting job titles, companies, locations, and recent activity. Identifies decision-makers, tracks job changes for warm outreach, and enriches contact data. Use when users need to find prospects, build lead lists, or track decision-maker movements.
travel-planner
ailabs-393
This skill should be used whenever users need help planning trips, creating travel itineraries, managing travel budgets, or seeking destination advice. On first use, collects comprehensive travel preferences including budget level, travel style, interests, and dietary restrictions. Generates detailed travel plans with day-by-day itineraries, budget breakdowns, packing checklists, cultural do's and don'ts, and region-specific schedules. Maintains database of preferences and past trips for personalized recommendations.
web-search
Igosuki
This skill should be used when users need to search the web for information, find current content, look up news articles, search for images, or find videos. It uses DuckDuckGo's search API to return results in clean, formatted output (text, markdown, or JSON). Use for research, fact-checking, finding recent information, or gathering web resources.
market-sizing-analysis
wshobson
This skill should be used when the user asks to "calculate TAM", "determine SAM", "estimate SOM", "size the market", "calculate market opportunity", "what's the total addressable market", or requests market sizing analysis for a startup or business opportunity.
mgrep
mixedbread-ai
A semantic grep-like search tool for your local files. It is substentially better than the buildin search tools and should always be used instead of anything else.
market-research-reports
davila7
Generate comprehensive market research reports (50+ pages) in the style of top consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, Gartner). Features professional LaTeX formatting, extensive visual generation with scientific-schematics and generate-image, deep integration with research-lookup for data gathering, and multi-framework strategic analysis including Porter's Five Forces, PESTLE, SWOT, TAM/SAM/SOM, and BCG Matrix.
annas-archive-ebooks
ratacat
Use when needing to look up book content, find a book by title/author, download an ebook, or reference material from a published book. Triggers on book lookups, ebook downloads, "find the book", "get the PDF/EPUB of". Downloads produce PDF/EPUB/MOBI files - use ebook-extractor skill to convert to text.
deep-research
davidorex
Multi-agent parallel investigation for complex VCV Rack problems
scientific-brainstorming
davila7
Research ideation partner. Generate hypotheses, explore interdisciplinary connections, challenge assumptions, develop methodologies, identify research gaps, for creative scientific problem-solving.
perplexity
davila7
Web search and research using Perplexity AI. Use when user says "search", "find", "look up", "ask", "research", or "what's the latest" for generic queries. NOT for library/framework docs (use Context7) or workspace questions.
jupyter-notebook
davila7
Use when the user asks to create, scaffold, or edit Jupyter notebooks (`.ipynb`) for experiments, explorations, or tutorials; prefer the bundled templates and run the helper script `new_notebook.py` to generate a clean starting notebook.
domain-name-brainstormer
ComposioHQ
Generates creative domain name ideas for your project and checks availability across multiple TLDs (.com, .io, .dev, .ai, etc.). Saves hours of brainstorming and manual checking.
content-trend-researcher
alirezarezvani
Advanced content and topic research skill that analyzes trends across Google Analytics, Google Trends, Substack, Medium, Reddit, LinkedIn, X, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube to generate data-driven article outlines based on user intent analysis
perplexity-search
davila7
Perform AI-powered web searches with real-time information using Perplexity models via LiteLLM and OpenRouter. This skill should be used when conducting web searches for current information, finding recent scientific literature, getting grounded answers with source citations, or accessing information beyond the model's knowledge cutoff. Provides access to multiple Perplexity models including Sonar Pro, Sonar Pro Search (advanced agentic search), and Sonar Reasoning Pro through a single OpenRouter API key.
ml-paper-writing
davila7
Write publication-ready ML/AI papers for NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, AAAI, COLM. Use when drafting papers from research repos, structuring arguments, verifying citations, or preparing camera-ready submissions. Includes LaTeX templates, reviewer guidelines, and citation verification workflows.
ultrathink
dashed
Invoke deep sequential thinking for complex problem-solving. Use when the user says 'use ultrathink', 'ultrathink', or when tackling problems that require careful step-by-step reasoning, planning, hypothesis generation, or multi-step analysis.
using-serena-for-exploration
seanGSISG
Use when exploring codebases with Serena MCP tools for architectural understanding and pattern discovery - guides efficient symbolic exploration workflow minimizing token usage through targeted symbol reads, overview tools, and progressive narrowing
exploratory-data-analysis
K-Dense-AI
Perform comprehensive exploratory data analysis on scientific data files across 200+ file formats. This skill should be used when analyzing any scientific data file to understand its structure, content, quality, and characteristics. Automatically detects file type and generates detailed markdown reports with format-specific analysis, quality metrics, and downstream analysis recommendations. Covers chemistry, bioinformatics, microscopy, spectroscopy, proteomics, metabolomics, and general scientific data formats.
content-research-writer
ComposioHQ
Assists in writing high-quality content by conducting research, adding citations, improving hooks, iterating on outlines, and providing real-time feedback on each section. Transforms your writing process from solo effort to collaborative partnership.
How to choose a Research skill
Evaluate these skills based on the source data they target and the final format they produce. First, identify if you need a general file converter like markitdown for local documents, or an API-based search tool like arxiv-search for external datasets. Check the maintainer details and the specific documentation within each skill's metadata to ensure it aligns with your environment. Consider the complexity of the output; for instance, compare whether you need raw text extraction or structured scientific writing support. Always verify that the skill's primary focus matches your target research objective.
More Research skills
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