Agent skill

Google Colab Guide

by wentorai in wentorai/research-plugins

Run and manage Google Colab notebooks for Python and ML research

MITAuto-check passedData & Analytics

Install Google Colab Guide

skills CLI
$ npx skills add wentorai/research-plugins --skill google-colab-guide -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install wentorai/research-plugins google-colab-guide --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/wentorai/research-plugins.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/tools/code-exec/google-colab-guide .claude/skills/google-colab-guide && 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/

Facts

Skill name
google-colab-guide
GitHub stars
298
Used in
1 other repo
Token cost
~2.1k tokens
SKILL.md length
353 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
405
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Run and manage Google Colab notebooks for Python and ML research

  • Works in 4 steps: Use tqdm progress bars to show activity → Save checkpoints frequently to Google… → Structure experiments to complete within… → …
  • Tasks that involve Jupyter notebooks
  • SKILL.md covers Overview, Getting Started, Data Management and Machine Learning Workflows, plus 4 more sections
  • Reaches github.com

What it does

Google Colab Guide is an agent skill from wentorai/research-plugins. Run and manage Google Colab notebooks for Python and ML research

Its SKILL.md is about 2.1k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Data & Analytics, covering Jupyter notebooks and Deep learning. It works with Python and Google Drive. The repository describes itself as: 350+ academic research skills, MCP configs, and plugins for Research-Claw and AI agents. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Jupyter notebooks
  • Tasks that involve Deep learning

Example prompts

  • “/google-colab-guide”

Requirements

  • Python 3

Workflow steps

4 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Use tqdm progress bars to show activity
  2. Save checkpoints frequently to Google Drive
  3. Structure experiments to complete within single sessions
  4. Use Colab Pro for longer runtimes (24 hours)

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit bf44b3c. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are python).

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

    • github.com

    Also links to:

    • colab.research.google.com
    • research.google.com
    • pytorch.org
    • huggingface.co

    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

Google Colab Guide loads about 2.1k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 21 tokens; SKILL.md has 353 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~21
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.1k

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 passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

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); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from wentorai/research-plugins at commit bf44b3c, republished under its MIT licence (© wentorai). 353 words, ~2,065 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/google-colab-guide/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
google-colab-guide
description
Run and manage Google Colab notebooks for Python and ML research

Google Colab Guide

Run Python code, train machine learning models, and perform data analysis using Google Colab's free cloud-hosted Jupyter notebooks with GPU and TPU access. This skill covers setup, resource management, persistent storage, and best practices for reproducible research computing.

Overview

Google Colab (Colaboratory) provides free access to GPU-accelerated Jupyter notebooks running on Google's cloud infrastructure. For academic researchers, Colab eliminates the barrier of expensive hardware for machine learning experiments, large-scale data processing, and computationally intensive statistical analyses. The free tier includes NVIDIA T4 GPUs, and paid tiers (Colab Pro, Pro+) offer A100 GPUs and extended runtime.

Colab notebooks run in ephemeral virtual machines that are recycled after inactivity or maximum runtime. This creates unique challenges for research: managing persistent data, saving checkpoints, reproducing results, and working with large datasets. This skill addresses these challenges with proven patterns used by ML researchers worldwide.

Colab integrates natively with Google Drive for storage, GitHub for version control, and supports the full Python scientific computing ecosystem (NumPy, pandas, scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX). Each notebook runs in an isolated environment with root access, allowing installation of any Linux package or Python library.

Getting Started

Runtime Configuration
python
# Check current runtime type
import subprocess
result = subprocess.run(['nvidia-smi'], capture_output=True, text=True)
print(result.stdout)  # Shows GPU info if GPU runtime is selected

# Check available resources
import psutil
print(f"RAM: {psutil.virtual_memory().total / 1e9:.1f} GB")
print(f"CPU cores: {psutil.cpu_count()}")
print(f"Disk: {psutil.disk_usage('/').total / 1e9:.1f} GB")
Show full SKILL.md (160 more words)Show less
Runtime Selection Guide
RuntimeGPURAMUse Case
CPUNone~12 GBData cleaning, text processing, small models
T4 GPU (free)16 GB VRAM~12 GBTraining medium models, inference
A100 GPU (Pro)40 GB VRAM~50 GBLarge model training, LLM fine-tuning
TPU v2 (free)8 cores~12 GBJAX/TensorFlow distributed training
Google Drive Mount
python
from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')

# Access files in Drive
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv('/content/drive/MyDrive/research/dataset.csv')

Data Management

Downloading Datasets
python
# From URL
!wget -q https://example.com/dataset.zip -O /content/dataset.zip
!unzip -q /content/dataset.zip -d /content/data/

# From Kaggle
!pip install -q kaggle
!mkdir -p ~/.kaggle
# Upload kaggle.json API key first
!kaggle datasets download -d user/dataset-name -p /content/data/

# From Hugging Face
!pip install -q datasets
from datasets import load_dataset
dataset = load_dataset("scientific_papers", "arxiv")
Persistent Storage Patterns

Since Colab VMs are ephemeral, always save important outputs to Google Drive:

python
import shutil
from pathlib import Path

DRIVE_BASE = Path("/content/drive/MyDrive/research/experiment_001")
DRIVE_BASE.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

def save_checkpoint(model, optimizer, epoch, loss):
    """Save training checkpoint to Google Drive."""
    checkpoint = {
        'epoch': epoch,
        'model_state_dict': model.state_dict(),
        'optimizer_state_dict': optimizer.state_dict(),
        'loss': loss
    }
    path = DRIVE_BASE / f"checkpoint_epoch_{epoch}.pt"
    torch.save(checkpoint, path)
    print(f"Checkpoint saved to {path}")

def save_results(df, name):
    """Save results DataFrame to Drive."""
    path = DRIVE_BASE / f"{name}.csv"
    df.to_csv(path, index=False)
    print(f"Results saved to {path}")

Machine Learning Workflows

PyTorch Training Loop
python
!pip install -q torch torchvision

import torch
import torch.nn as nn
from torch.utils.data import DataLoader

# Automatic device selection
device = torch.device('cuda' if torch.cuda.is_available() else 'cpu')
print(f"Using device: {device}")

model = MyModel().to(device)
optimizer = torch.optim.AdamW(model.parameters(), lr=1e-4)
criterion = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()

for epoch in range(num_epochs):
    model.train()
    total_loss = 0
    for batch in train_loader:
        inputs, labels = batch[0].to(device), batch[1].to(device)
        optimizer.zero_grad()
        outputs = model(inputs)
        loss = criterion(outputs, labels)
        loss.backward()
        optimizer.step()
        total_loss += loss.item()

    avg_loss = total_loss / len(train_loader)
    print(f"Epoch {epoch+1}/{num_epochs}, Loss: {avg_loss:.4f}")

    # Save checkpoint every 5 epochs
    if (epoch + 1) % 5 == 0:
        save_checkpoint(model, optimizer, epoch + 1, avg_loss)
Hugging Face Transformers
python
!pip install -q transformers accelerate

from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForSequenceClassification, Trainer

model_name = "allenai/scibert_scivocab_uncased"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
model = AutoModelForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained(
    model_name, num_labels=5
)

trainer = Trainer(
    model=model,
    args=training_args,
    train_dataset=train_dataset,
    eval_dataset=eval_dataset,
    tokenizer=tokenizer
)
trainer.train()

# Save to Drive
model.save_pretrained(str(DRIVE_BASE / "fine_tuned_scibert"))

Environment Management

Installing Packages
python
# Install specific versions for reproducibility
!pip install -q transformers==4.40.0 datasets==2.18.0 evaluate==0.4.1

# Install from GitHub
!pip install -q git+https://github.com/huggingface/peft.git

# Install system packages
!apt-get -qq install -y graphviz texlive-latex-base
Reproducibility Setup
python
import random
import numpy as np
import torch

def set_seed(seed=42):
    """Set all random seeds for reproducibility."""
    random.seed(seed)
    np.random.seed(seed)
    torch.manual_seed(seed)
    torch.cuda.manual_seed_all(seed)
    torch.backends.cudnn.deterministic = True
    torch.backends.cudnn.benchmark = False

set_seed(42)
Requirements File
python
# Generate requirements for reproducibility
!pip freeze > /content/drive/MyDrive/research/requirements.txt

# Restore environment in new session
!pip install -q -r /content/drive/MyDrive/research/requirements.txt

Performance Optimization

Memory Management
python
# Monitor GPU memory
!nvidia-smi

# Clear GPU cache
torch.cuda.empty_cache()

# Use mixed precision training for 2x speedup
from torch.cuda.amp import autocast, GradScaler
scaler = GradScaler()

for batch in train_loader:
    optimizer.zero_grad()
    with autocast():
        outputs = model(inputs)
        loss = criterion(outputs, labels)
    scaler.scale(loss).backward()
    scaler.step(optimizer)
    scaler.update()
Preventing Disconnection

Colab disconnects after 90 minutes of inactivity (free tier). Strategies:

  1. Use tqdm progress bars to show activity
  2. Save checkpoints frequently to Google Drive
  3. Structure experiments to complete within single sessions
  4. Use Colab Pro for longer runtimes (24 hours)

GitHub Integration

python
# Clone a research repository
!git clone https://github.com/user/research-repo.git /content/repo

# Push results back
%cd /content/repo
!git config user.email "researcher@university.edu"
!git config user.name "Researcher"
!git add results/
!git commit -m "Add experiment results from Colab"
!git push

References

© wentorai, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/tools/code-exec/google-colab-guide of wentorai/research-plugins.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit bf44b3c

Used in 1 other repository

We found 1 copy of this SKILL.md (exact, near-identical or edited) in other folders, from 1 other GitHub owner. This page covers the copy in wentorai/research-plugins, which our catalogue first saw on October 7, 2026.

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Questions about Google Colab Guide

What does Google Colab Guide do?

Run and manage Google Colab notebooks for Python and ML research. Google Colab Guide is an agent skill from wentorai/research-plugins.

When should I use Google Colab Guide?

Google Colab Guide fits situations like: tasks that involve Jupyter notebooks; tasks that involve Deep learning.

How do I install Google Colab Guide in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add wentorai/research-plugins --skill google-colab-guide -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/tools/code-exec/google-colab-guide in wentorai/research-plugins) into .claude/skills/google-colab-guide in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Google Colab Guide in Codex?

Run `npx skills add wentorai/research-plugins --skill google-colab-guide -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/tools/code-exec/google-colab-guide in wentorai/research-plugins) into .agents/skills/google-colab-guide in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Google Colab Guide 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 wentorai/research-plugins --skill google-colab-guide -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/google-colab-guide, .gemini/skills/google-colab-guide, .github/skills/google-colab-guide and .opencode/skills/google-colab-guide in your project.

What does Google Colab Guide need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Google Colab Guide is instructions for the agent only. Our summary lists: Python 3.

Does Google Colab Guide access the network?

SKILL.md names 5 domains. In commands or code: github.com; the agent is likely to contact it when it follows the instructions. As links in the text: colab.research.google.com, research.google.com, pytorch.org and huggingface.co. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Google Colab Guide safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Google Colab Guide use?

Google Colab Guide is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Google Colab Guide use?

About 2.1k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 8.3k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Google Colab Guide?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Google Colab Guide: Pixi Environment Builder (xuzhougeng/wisp-science, 1k stars), Wasm Compatibility (ericmjl/llamabot, 183 stars), Marimo Pair (cosanlab/nltools, 131 stars) and Marimo Notebook (cosanlab/nltools, 131 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Google Colab Guide?

wentorai (a GitHub user) maintains it in wentorai/research-plugins, which has 298 GitHub stars. The repository holds 405 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on June 19, 2026.

Source: wentorai/research-plugins on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.