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skilldrop·docs·How-to

Use the Research pack

Install the Research pack, run its first task, and follow a typical session step by step.

Take a question from vague to answered: plan the research around the decision it serves, synthesise the sources with every claim cited, and rank rival explanations by the evidence against them.

Reach for it when: You've been asked to look into something before a decision, and you need an answer you can defend, with sources.

1. Install it

npx skilldrop-cli install --pack research                 # Claude Code, your user folder
npx skilldrop-cli install --pack research --project       # Claude Code, this repo
npx skilldrop-cli install --pack research --ide cursor    # or kiro, codex, antigravity, copilot
npx skilldrop-cli install --pack research --local         # this repo, hidden from git

In Claude Code you can also add the marketplace once (/plugin marketplace add sananthanarayan/skilldrop) and run /plugin install research@skilldrop.

It brings core with it, so the shared skills are there too.

2. Run the first task: turn a vague research request into a plan you can finish

Before you start:

Paste this into your agent:

I need to research whether our 14-person support team should move to a four-day week. Our COO decides by 1 November. I have about 20 hours and can pull ticket data from Zendesk.

How to tell it worked: research-plan writes a plan that opens with the decision, the decider and the date, then gives three to six sub-questions, each with a finding that would change the decision, a method, search strings, and a stopping rule with a budget cap.

If nothing happens: If you get a plan built around a decision you didn't give, say who decides what and by when, and run it again. If research-plan does not activate, ask for it by name ("use research-plan").

3. A typical session

Bring:

A session takes about An hour to plan and an hour to synthesise, plus however long the research takes.

  1. research-plan: Say what decision the research is for, then give it the topic and your time budget. You get: A two-page plan: the precise question, sub-questions with the finding that would change the decision, a method for each, inclusion criteria, search strings, and a stopping rule. You decide: Agree the thresholds before you start, so the findings can't be read to fit.
  2. source-synthesis: Hand it the sources you collected, as text, with the plan's question. You get: What the sources support on the question, each claim traceable to its source, with disagreements and echoes made explicit, the sources' own sums checked, labelled estimates where a figure is needed, and the gaps. Ask for a cited literature review to get page-level citations and strength ratings.
  3. hypothesis-comparison: If the question is why something happened, give it the observation and the cited findings. You get: A consistency matrix ranking the explanations by the evidence against them, the evidence the ranking rests on, and the next observation that would tell the leaders apart. You decide: Act on the leading explanation, or run the next observation first.

You end with: A decision-led plan, a synthesis that keeps what the sources say apart from everything else, and, for why-questions, a ranked set of explanations with the next test to run.

4. Run it as a loop

A loop runs the skills in order and stops at each gate for a verdict. Install and start one:

npx skilldrop-cli install --loop --pack research

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