Review Paper
maxwell2732/paper-replicate-agent-demo
Comprehensive manuscript review covering argument structure, econometric specification, citation completeness, and potential referee objections
Comprehensive causal inference toolkit for social science research.
Install Scholar Causal
$ npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a claude-codeProject install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.
$ gh skill install joshzyj/open-scholar-skill scholar-causal --agent claude-codeProject scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/scholar-causal .claude/skills/scholar-causal && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.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/
Install the "scholar-causal" agent skill from https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill/tree/main/.claude/skills/scholar-causal into .claude/skills/scholar-causal/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "scholar-causal", 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 install https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill/tree/main/.claude/skills/scholar-causalType 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.
$ npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a codexProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.
$ gh skill install joshzyj/open-scholar-skill scholar-causal --agent codexProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/scholar-causal .agents/skills/scholar-causal && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.
Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/
Install the "scholar-causal" agent skill from https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill/tree/main/.claude/skills/scholar-causal into .agents/skills/scholar-causal/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "scholar-causal", 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.
$ npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a cursorProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.
$ gh skill install joshzyj/open-scholar-skill scholar-causal --agent cursorProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/scholar-causal .cursor/skills/scholar-causal && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.
Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/
Install the "scholar-causal" agent skill from https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill/tree/main/.claude/skills/scholar-causal into .cursor/skills/scholar-causal/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "scholar-causal", 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 https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.git --path .claude/skills/scholar-causal--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.
$ npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a gemini-cliProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.
$ gh skill install joshzyj/open-scholar-skill scholar-causal --agent gemini-cliProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/scholar-causal .gemini/skills/scholar-causal && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.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/
Install the "scholar-causal" agent skill from https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill/tree/main/.claude/skills/scholar-causal into .gemini/skills/scholar-causal/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "scholar-causal", 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.
$ gh skill install joshzyj/open-scholar-skill scholar-causalInstalls 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).
$ npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a github-copilotProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/scholar-causal .github/skills/scholar-causal && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.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/
Install the "scholar-causal" agent skill from https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill/tree/main/.claude/skills/scholar-causal into .github/skills/scholar-causal/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "scholar-causal", 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.
$ npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a opencodeOpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.
$ gh skill install joshzyj/open-scholar-skill scholar-causal --agent opencodeProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/scholar-causal .opencode/skills/scholar-causal && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.
OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "scholar-causal" agent skill from https://github.com/joshzyj/open-scholar-skill/tree/main/.claude/skills/scholar-causal into .opencode/skills/scholar-causal/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "scholar-causal", 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
scholar-causal- GitHub stars
- 168
- Token cost
- ~10k tokens
- SKILL.md length
- 3,474 words
- Files
- 6 (incl. references)
- Skills in repo
- 30
- Repo updated
- First seen
- Licence
- Custom licence
At a glance
Comprehensive causal inference toolkit for social science research.
- Works in 3 steps: Homogeneous treatment: No variation in… → No spillovers: Unit i's potential… → No general equilibrium effects:…
- The user needs to select and justify a causal identification strategy
- SKILL.md covers ABSOLUTE RULE — NEVER…, Arguments, Setup and PART 1: DAG FUNDAMENTALS, plus 6 more sections
- Runs R scripts from its folder; calls bash and python3
What it does
Scholar Causal is an agent skill from joshzyj/open-scholar-skill. Comprehensive causal inference toolkit for social science research. Covers DAG construction, method selection, and thirteen identification strategies (OLS, DiD, RD, IV, FE, matching/reweighting, synthetic control, causal mediation, staggered DiD, DML/causal forests, bunching estimation, shift-share/Bartik instruments, distributional/quantile methods) — each with assumptions, diagnostics, R code, Stata code, and a write-up template. Use when the user needs to select and justify a causal identification strategy…
Its SKILL.md is about 10k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 6 other files, including reference files (for example `references/dag-patterns.md`, `references/identification-toolkit.md` and `references/matching-weighting.md`).
It sits in Research & Science, covering Econometrics and empirical research, Dispute resolution and Citation management. The repository describes itself as: Open scholar skill, a claude code plugin, for academic research.
When your agent uses it
- The user needs to select and justify a causal identification strategy
- Build a causal DAG
- Write the identification argument in their Methods section
Example prompts
- “/scholar-causal”
Workflow steps
3 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.
- Homogeneous treatment: No variation in treatment doses (D is binary and consistent)
- No spillovers: Unit i's potential outcomes are unaffected by unit j's treatment status
- No general equilibrium effects: Treatment effect at scale equals treatment effect at margin
What it can do on your machine
Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 6e5ac8e. 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
Ships script files (R), which the agent can run.
Shell commands in SKILL.md call:
bashpython3
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Network
Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):
bcallaway11.github.io
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
Scholar Causal loads about 10k tokens when it runs, and up to ~47k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 167 tokens; SKILL.md has 3,474 words of instructions outside code blocks.
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
Its licence (Custom licence) doesn't allow us to republish the file, so here is its outline and opening line. It has 3,474 words (~9,951 tokens).
“You are an expert in causal inference applying the potential outcomes framework, Pearl's do-calculus, and modern quasi-experimental methods to social science research. You help researchers select the right identification strategy, build causal diagrams, run diagnostics, and write the identification argument…”
- name
- scholar-causal
- tools
- Read, WebSearch, Bash, Write, Grep, Glob
- argument-hint
- [research question] [key variables: X, Y, possible confounders/mediators] [data structure: panel/cross-section/natural experiment] [optional: data path for…
- user-invocable
- true
Files
SKILL.md and 5 other files (references) in .claude/skills/scholar-causal of joshzyj/open-scholar-skill.
- SKILL.md
- references/dag-patterns.md
- references/did-cs-workflow.R
- references/identification-toolkit.md
- references/matching-weighting.md
- references/strategies.md
Open the folder on GitHubat commit 6e5ac8e
Compare with similar skills
Scholar Causal 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.
| Skill | Stars | Used in | Tokens | Auto-check | Licence | Repo updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scholar Causal this skilljoshzyj/open-scholar-skill | 168 | — | ~10k | Automated safety check: Pass | Custom licence | |
| Review Papermaxwell2732/paper-replicate-agent-demo | 137 | 2 repos | ~1.1k | Automated safety check: Pass | None | |
| Bio Workflows Causal Genomics PipelineGPTomics/bioSkills | 1.2k | 2 repos | ~5.5k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Fin Ref Papercsmar432/finai-research | 109 | — | ~2k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Paper Excellencebrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills | 4.5k | — | ~914 | Automated safety check: Notes | Custom licence | |
| Review Paperbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills | 4.5k | — | ~1.6k | Automated safety check: Pass | Custom licence |
Similar skills
Bio Workflows Causal Genomics Pipeline
GPTomics/bioSkills
End-to-end post-GWAS causal inference pipeline orchestrating heritability partitioning, genetic correlation, Mendelian randomization with CHP-aware sensitivity (CAUSE / LHC-MR), colocalization…
Fin Ref Paper
csmar432/finai-research
从LITREVIEW.md和IDEAREPORT.md中提取参考文献，自动生成符合JF/JFE/RFS/GB-T-7714格式的references.bib，并管理引用一致性。
Paper Excellence
brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills
Comprehensive multi-dimensional review of the sewage-house-prices project.
Review Paper
brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills
Comprehensive manuscript review covering argument structure, econometric specification, citation completeness, and potential referee objections.
Ectheory Literature Positioning
franklee16/academic-research-skills
A skill your agent uses to stake an Econometric Theory (ET) contribution against the existing theory frontier — which assumptions you weaken, which limit result you generalize, what was previously…
More from joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
All 30 skills in this repoScholar Annotate
joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
Turn unstructured text into validated, structured variables at corpus scale with LLMs: codebook design, dev/gold-set construction, DSPy prompt optimization, a hard reliability gate (Cohen κ ≥ 0.70)…
Scholar Auto Research
joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
Stable, deterministic social-science research-paper pipeline from idea or data to verified manuscript, citations, replication package, and final md/docx/tex/pdf outputs.
Scholar RAG
joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
Build and query a local vector database + GraphRAG over your entire reference library (Zotero or a PDF folder) for literature review.
Scholar Data
joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
Comprehensive open data directory (100+ datasets across 14 categories) with auto-fetch capability, plus data collection instrument design, variable dictionaries, data management, IRB materials, and…
Scholar Eda
joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
Conduct exploratory data analysis (EDA) before hypothesis testing.
Scholar Idea
joshzyj/open-scholar-skill
Explore broad social science ideas and convert them into formal, researchable questions.
Related
Categories
Questions about Scholar Causal
What does Scholar Causal do?
Comprehensive causal inference toolkit for social science research. Scholar Causal is an agent skill from joshzyj/open-scholar-skill. Comprehensive causal inference toolkit for social science research.
When should I use Scholar Causal?
Scholar Causal fits situations like: the user needs to select and justify a causal identification strategy; build a causal DAG; write the identification argument in their Methods section.
How do I install Scholar Causal in Claude Code?
Run `npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/scholar-causal in joshzyj/open-scholar-skill) into .claude/skills/scholar-causal in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.
How do I install Scholar Causal in Codex?
Run `npx skills add joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/scholar-causal in joshzyj/open-scholar-skill) into .agents/skills/scholar-causal in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.
Can I use Scholar Causal 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 joshzyj/open-scholar-skill --skill scholar-causal -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/scholar-causal, .gemini/skills/scholar-causal, .github/skills/scholar-causal and .opencode/skills/scholar-causal in your project.
What does Scholar Causal need to run?
Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Scholar Causal needs R for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (bash and python3).
Does Scholar Causal access the network?
SKILL.md names 1 domain. As links in the text: bcallaway11.github.io. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.
Is Scholar Causal 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 Scholar Causal use?
Scholar Causal 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 Scholar Causal use?
About 10k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 40k 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 37k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.
What are the alternatives to Scholar Causal?
Skills that share tags, products or a category with Scholar Causal: Review Paper (maxwell2732/paper-replicate-agent-demo, 137 stars), Bio Workflows Causal Genomics Pipeline (GPTomics/bioSkills, 1.2k stars), Fin Ref Paper (csmar432/finai-research, 109 stars) and Paper Excellence (brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, 4.5k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.
Who maintains Scholar Causal?
joshzyj (a GitHub user) maintains it in joshzyj/open-scholar-skill, which has 168 GitHub stars. The repository holds 30 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 18, 2026.
Source: joshzyj/open-scholar-skill on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.