Agent skill

Five Questions

by brycewang-stanford in brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

Deeply analyze any empirical economics PDF using the five-question framework (五问框架): research question, identification strategy, core estimand, robustness logic, and scholarly contribution.

Custom licenceAuto-check: notesDocuments & Office

Install Five Questions

skills CLI

$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills five-questions --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions .claude/skills/five-questions && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Paste into Claude Code

Install the "five-questions" agent skill from https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/tree/main/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions into .claude/skills/five-questions/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "five-questions", then confirm the skill loads.

Claude Code copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

$skill-installer

$skill-installer install https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/tree/main/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions

Type this inside Codex. $skill-installer <name> installs a curated skill from openai/skills. The installer writes to $CODEX_HOME/skills (default ~/.codex/skills). Restart Codex if the skill does not show up.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a codex

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills five-questions --agent codex

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions .agents/skills/five-questions && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.

Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/

Paste into Codex

Install the "five-questions" agent skill from https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/tree/main/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions into .agents/skills/five-questions/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "five-questions", then confirm the skill loads.

Codex copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a cursor

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills five-questions --agent cursor

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions .cursor/skills/five-questions && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.

Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/

Paste into Cursor

Install the "five-questions" agent skill from https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/tree/main/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions into .cursor/skills/five-questions/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "five-questions", then confirm the skill loads.

Cursor copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

gemini skills install

$ gemini skills install https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git --path skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions

--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a gemini-cli

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills five-questions --agent gemini-cli

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions .gemini/skills/five-questions && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.gemini/skills/ instead of .gemini/skills for a personal install, then run /skills reload.

Gemini CLI skills documentation · loads skills from .gemini/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into Gemini CLI

Install the "five-questions" agent skill from https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/tree/main/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions into .gemini/skills/five-questions/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "five-questions", then confirm the skill loads.

Gemini CLI copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills five-questions

Installs for Copilot at project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Preview a skill first with gh skill preview. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

skills CLI

$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a github-copilot

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions .github/skills/five-questions && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.copilot/skills/ instead of .github/skills for a personal install. Commit .github/skills so cloud agent and code review can use it.

GitHub Copilot skills documentation · loads skills from .github/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into GitHub Copilot

Install the "five-questions" agent skill from https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/tree/main/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions into .github/skills/five-questions/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "five-questions", then confirm the skill loads.

GitHub Copilot copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a opencode

OpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills five-questions --agent opencode

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions .opencode/skills/five-questions && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.

OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into OpenCode

Install the "five-questions" agent skill from https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/tree/main/skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions into .opencode/skills/five-questions/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "five-questions", then confirm the skill loads.

OpenCode copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

Facts

Skill name: five-questions
GitHub stars: 4.5k
Token cost: ~1.7k tokens
SKILL.md length: 463 words
Files: 9 (incl. scripts, references)
Skills in repo: 383
Repo updated: Oct 5, 2026
First seen: Oct 7, 2026
Licence: Custom licence

At a glance

Deeply analyze any empirical economics PDF using the five-question framework (五问框架): research question, identification strategy, core estimand, robustness logic, and scholarly contribution.

Works in 7 steps: Validate Input → Create Work Directory → Convert PDF to Markdown → …
Robustness logic - run /five-questions
SKILL.md covers Input, File locations (explicit), Orchestration and Error Handling, plus 2 more sections
Runs Python scripts from its folder; calls conda and qpdf

What it does

Five Questions is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills. Deeply analyze any empirical economics PDF using the five-question framework (五问框架): research question, identification strategy, core estimand, robustness logic, and scholarly contribution. Converts the PDF to Markdown, dispatches 5 parallel sub-agents (one per question), then compiles a 2000–3000 Chinese-character report with a transferable methodology checklist. Optimized for empirical economics papers in top journals (AER, QJE, JPE, RFS, RoF, JFE, etc.). Use this skill whenever the user wants to: -…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.7k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 11 other files, including scripts and reference files (for example `agents/compiler.md`, `agents/q1-research-question.md` and `agents/q2-identification.md`).

It sits in Documents & Office, covering PDF, Subagents and Hypothesis generation. The repository describes itself as: 🔬 A curated collection of 23,000+ agent skills for empirical research across 8 social science disciplines. | 精选 23,000+ AI Agent 技能库，覆盖8大社会科学学科的实证研究。CoPaper.AI…

When your agent uses it

Robustness logic - run /five-questions
/paper-five-q-analysis - 帮我做五问分析
Analyze this paper with the five-question framework

Example prompts

“帮我做五问分析”
“用五问框架分析这篇论文”
“analyze this paper with the five-question framework”
“/five-questions”

Requirements

Python 3
Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Write, Bash, Agent

Workflow steps

7 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

Validate Input
Create Work Directory
Convert PDF to Markdown
Dispatch 5 Parallel Q-Agents
Verify Q-Files
Run Compiler Agent
Report to User

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 9fa87d8. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

Tool permissions
Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:
- Read
- Write
- Bash
- Agent
From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.
Runs code
Ships 1 file in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.
Shell commands in SKILL.md call:
- conda
- qpdf
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Network
No URLs in SKILL.md.
From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.
Credentials
Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.
From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Five Questions loads about 1.7k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3.5k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 230 tokens; SKILL.md has 463 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it: ~230
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches: ~1.7k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them: ~3.5k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check: notes

The automated check noted patterns worth knowing about, such as sudo or a known installer.

NotePre-approves every shell command (allowed-tools: Bash)SKILL.md
```
allowed-tools: Read, Write, Bash, Agent
```

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

Its licence (Custom licence) doesn't allow us to republish the file, so here is its outline and opening line. It has 463 words (~1,739 tokens).

“Systematically analyze an empirical economics paper using the five-question framework. Produces a structured Chinese report (2000–3000 chars) with a transferable methodology checklist.”

— opening of SKILL.md by brycewang-stanford, Custom licence

name: five-questions
allowed-tools: Read, Write, Bash, Agent
trigger-phrases: /five-questions, /five-q, /paper-five-q-analysis, 用五问框架分析, 帮我做五问分析, 深度拆解这篇论文, five-question framework analysis, analyze this paper systematically

Read the full SKILL.md on GitHub

Files

SKILL.md and 8 other files (scripts, references) in skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions of brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.

SKILL.md
agents/compiler.md
agents/q1-research-question.md
agents/q2-identification.md
agents/q3-estimand.md
agents/q4-robustness.md
agents/q5-contribution.md
references/five-q-framework.md
scripts/convert_pdf.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 9fa87d8

Compare with similar skills

Five Questions next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Five Questions compared with similar skills
Skill	Stars	Used in	Tokens	Auto-check	Licence	Repo updated
Five Questions this skillbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills	4.5k	—	~1.7k	Automated safety check: Notes	Custom licence	4 days ago
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Adu Corrections PDFmikeOnBreeze/cc-crossbeam	293	—	~1.5k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	7 mo ago
Doc SummarizerBlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard	315	—	~1.2k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	yesterday
Literature Extensive Readaipoch/medical-research-skills	2k	—	~1.1k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	22 days ago
Literature Close Readaipoch/medical-research-skills	2k	—	~2.4k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	22 days ago

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Questions about Five Questions

What does Five Questions do?

Deeply analyze any empirical economics PDF using the five-question framework (五问框架): research question, identification strategy, core estimand, robustness logic, and scholarly contribution. Five Questions is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills. Deeply analyze any empirical economics PDF using the five-question framework (五问框架): research question, identification strategy, core estimand, robustness logic, and scholarly contribution.

When should I use Five Questions?

Five Questions fits situations like: robustness logic - run /five-questions; /paper-five-q-analysis - 帮我做五问分析; analyze this paper with the five-question framework.

How do I install Five Questions in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions in brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills) into .claude/skills/five-questions in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Five Questions in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/68-research-productivity-skills/five-questions in brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills) into .agents/skills/five-questions in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Five Questions in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill five-questions -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/five-questions, .gemini/skills/five-questions, .github/skills/five-questions and .opencode/skills/five-questions in your project.

What does Five Questions need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Five Questions needs Python for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (conda and qpdf). Our summary lists: Python 3. Its frontmatter pre-approves these tools: Read, Write, Bash, Agent.

Does Five Questions access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Five Questions safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found notes only (pre-approves every shell command (allowed-tools: bash)), nothing it rates as a warning. It is not a guarantee. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.

What licence does Five Questions use?

Five Questions has a licence file (the repository's licence) that doesn't match a standard licence. Read it on GitHub before reusing the skill.

How many tokens does Five Questions use?

About 1.7k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 7k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 1.7k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Five Questions?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Five Questions: Translate Book (deusyu/translate-book, 2.1k stars), Adu Corrections PDF (mikeOnBreeze/cc-crossbeam, 293 stars), Doc Summarizer (BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard, 315 stars) and Literature Extensive Read (aipoch/medical-research-skills, 2k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Five Questions?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, which has 4,542 GitHub stars. The repository holds 383 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 5, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.

Install Five Questions

Facts

At a glance

What it does

When your agent uses it

Example prompts

Requirements

Workflow steps

What it can do on your machine

Tool permissions

Runs code

Network

Credentials

Context cost

Safety

SKILL.md

Files

Compare with similar skills

Similar skills

More from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

Related

Questions about Five Questions