Research Ideation

What it does

When your agent uses it

• User says give me research ideas on X
• Brainstorm questions about Y
• What could I study with this data?
• Im looking for a paper idea on...

Example prompts

• “give me research ideas on X”
• “brainstorm questions about Y”
• “what could I study with this data?”
• “/research-ideation”

Requirements

• Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Grep, Glob, Write, WebSearch, WebFetch, Agent, Task

Workflow steps

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

1. 1Understand the input. Read $ARGUMENTS and any referenced files. Check master_supporting_docs/ for related papers. Check .claude/rules/ for…
2. 2Generate 3-5 research questions ordered from descriptive to causal
3. 3Tag each RQ with a likely paper type (drawn from methods-referee.md)
4. 4For each research question, develop
5. 5Rank the questions by feasibility and contribution.
6. 6Save the output to quality_reports/research_ideation_[sanitized_topic].md

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit ae72617. 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
  • Grep
  • Glob
  • Write
  • WebSearch
  • WebFetch
  • Agent
  • Task

  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 markdown).

  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

Research Ideation loads about 1.7k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 107 tokens; SKILL.md has 571 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~107

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.7k

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

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 pedrohcgs/claude-code-my-workflow at commit ae72617, republished under its MIT licence (© pedrohcgs). 571 words, ~1,665 tokens.

name

research-ideation

description

Generate structured research questions, testable hypotheses, and candidate empirical strategies from a topic, phenomenon, or dataset description. Use when user says "give me research ideas on X", "brainstorm questions about Y", "what could I study with this data?", "I'm looking for a paper idea on...", "generate hypotheses for...". One-shot generation, not multi-turn. For idea-refinement use `/interview-me`.

allowed-tools

Read, Grep, Glob, Write, WebSearch, WebFetch, Agent, Task

argument-hint

[topic, phenomenon, or dataset description] [--no-verify]

# Research Ideation: [Topic]

**Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD]
**Input:** [Original input]

## Overview

[1-2 paragraphs situating the topic and why it matters]

## Research Questions

### RQ1: [Question] (Feasibility: High/Medium/Low)

**Type:** Descriptive / Correlational / Causal / Mechanism / Policy
**Paper type:** reduced-form / structural / theory+empirics / descriptive / formal-theory / survey-experiment / unsure

**Hypothesis:** [Testable prediction]

**Identification Strategy:**
- **Method:** [the identification approach you would defend in a seminar]
- **Treatment:** [What varies and when]
- **Control group:** [Comparison units]
- **Key assumption:** [the assumption the method's validity rests on, stated so it can be attacked]

**Data Requirements:**
- [Dataset 1 — what it provides]
- [Dataset 2 — what it provides]

**Potential Pitfalls:**
1. [Threat 1 and possible mitigation]
2. [Threat 2 and possible mitigation]

**Related Work:** [Author (Year)], [Author (Year)]

---

[Repeat for RQ2-RQ5]

## Ranking

| RQ | Feasibility | Contribution | Priority |
|----|-------------|-------------|----------|
| 1  | High        | Medium      | ...      |
| 2  | Medium      | High        | ...      |

## Suggested Next Steps

1. [Most promising direction and immediate action]
2. [Data to obtain]
3. [Literature to review deeper]

© pedrohcgs, 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 .claude/skills/research-ideation of pedrohcgs/claude-code-my-workflow.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit ae72617