skill
research-agents
Claude Code subagents for literature research — PubMed search, citation formatting, synthesis. Zero-install. Apache-2.0.
Set up
Skills are installed by placing their folder where your agent loads skills.
The download comes from github.com/fingerskier/research-agents itself, not from our server, so what you get is exactly what its author published.
Install instructions come from the README
README
synced Oct 23, 2026research-agents
Subagents for literature research in Claude Code — search the literature, format the citations, and synthesize a verified corpus into prose.
Zero-install. No bundled servers and no API keys: the search agent talks to the public NCBI E-utilities API directly. Drop the plugin in and it works.
Agents
| Agent | Model | Tools | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
pubmed-searcher | haiku | web | Searches PubMed via NCBI E-utilities; returns structured hits (PMID, title, authors, journal, year, DOI). |
citation-formatter | haiku | read-only | Turns hits into Markdown footnotes, a numbered bibliography, or BibTeX. |
literature-synthesizer | opus | read-only | Weaves a corpus of sources into integrated, cited prose — a review section or chapter draft. |
A typical flow: pubmed-searcher finds the papers → citation-formatter renders the references → literature-synthesizer writes the section.
Verifying that a cited source actually supports a claim? Use the
fact-checkeragent fromclaude-agents-core— it's the general-purpose tool for that, so this pack doesn't duplicate it.
Install
claude plugin marketplace add fingerskier/claude-plugins
claude plugin install research-agents@fingerskier-plugins
Usage
Agents are routed to automatically when a request matches their description, or you can call one explicitly:
"Use pubmed-searcher to find recent randomized trials on vitamin D and bone density, then have citation-formatter give me BibTeX."
"Hand these 12 abstracts to literature-synthesizer and draft a background section on the mechanism."
How it works
Each agent lives in agents/<name>.md — YAML frontmatter declares the agent (name, routing description, model, tool allowlist) and the markdown body is its system prompt. See the subagents docs.
NCBI asks that automated E-utilities use stay under ~3 requests/second; these agents make only a handful of calls per task, well within that.
Contributing
Issues and PRs welcome. New agents should stay general within the research domain (no project- or institution-specific coupling), declare the minimum tools they need, and pick a model that fits (search/format → haiku, synthesis → opus).
License
Apache-2.0 © 2026 Fingerskier