Deep Research Agent Skills That Find Real
Deep research skills cover the full evidence workflow: scoping the question you are actually trying to answer, sourcing candidate material, extracting the specific claims that matter rather than whole pages, tracking where sources disagree or fall short, synthesizing evidence into an argument, and keeping citations checkable and reusable. These are task skills, not answer generators — they structure how an agent works through a research problem. Use the ranked list by first finding the sub-topic where your workflow breaks down. If you start with a vague question, look at scoping skills. If you drown in open tabs, look at sourcing and evidence extraction. If your write-up gets challenged, look at contradiction tracking and citation. Pick one skill for the weak stage rather than stacking several, and check that its described behavior matches the stage you need.
8 to start with29 top options
Start with these.
Deep research is an evidence workflow, not one long answer: scope it, gather sources, extract evidence, resolve contradictions, then synthesize with citations.
These are the closest matches for this work. Start with the first one and open it to install.
- Rank 01View Agent SkillDirect
parallel-web
Unified Parallel CLI toolkit for web search, URL extraction, deep research, data enrichment, entity discovery, and recurring monitoring, with academic-source priority and citation guidance.
Needs (stated): API key · Network access · Python
1,775 · popularity - Rank 02View Agent SkillDirect
firecrawl
NotableAny live-web task via the Firecrawl CLI — including ordinary web research: searching the web, reading or extracting pages, gathering sources, discovering site URLs, bulk extraction, downloading a site, change alerts, or pages needing clicks/login — web only; local files route to firecrawl-parse. For papers use firecrawl-research-index; for library, API, error, or bug questions use firecrawl-developer-index.
101,924 · popularity - Rank 03View Agent SkillDirect
firecrawl-search
NotableFind web sources with query-relevant page excerpts and optional full-page content, and discover workflows, data APIs, and indexes. Use for web research or finding structured records, listings, transcripts, and datasets. Supports semantic tool discovery, domain matching, and progressive catalogue browsing.
83,108 · popularity - Rank 04View Agent SkillDirect
parallel-web-search
Default web search skill using parallel-cli for lookups and research, with inline citations and a mandatory Sources section. Fast and cost-effective for current info.
Needs (stated): Network access
13,925 · popularity - Rank 05View Agent SkillDirect
research
NotableInvestigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.
516,314 · popularity - Rank 06View Agent SkillDirect
firecrawl-deep-research
Produce an intensive, cited analytical report: executive summary, multi-angle findings, contrarian views, open questions, and full sources. Use only when the user needs rigorous synthesis of a complex topic (scientific, technical, policy, or market-analytical) that cannot be answered with a short…
34,853 · popularity - Rank 07View Agent SkillDirect
parallel-deep-research
ONLY use when user explicitly says 'deep research', 'exhaustive', 'comprehensive report', or 'thorough investigation'. Slower and more expensive than parallel-web-search. For normal research/lookup requests, use parallel-web-search instead. Supports multi-turn: pass --previous-interaction-id from a…
Needs (stated): Network access
15,095 · popularity - Rank 08View Agent SkillDirect
deep-research
Use when the user needs multi-source research with citation tracking, evidence persistence, and structured report generation. Triggers on "deep research", "comprehensive analysis", "research report", "compare X vs Y", "analyze trends", or "state of the art". Not for simple lookups, debugging, or…
10,020 · popularity
Explore 21 more Agent Skills
- Rank 09View Agent SkillPossible
parallel-debugging
Debugging framework using Analysis of Competing Hypotheses with parallel investigation, evidence collection, and root-cause arbitration.
9,574 · popularity - Rank 10View Agent SkillPossible
analyze
Answers data questions from quick lookups to full analyses and formal reports, with validation checks, methodology, caveats, and recommendations.
5,531 · popularity - Rank 11View Agent SkillPossible
axiom-sre
Hypothesis-driven SRE investigator for incidents and debugging, querying Axiom observability data with strict no-guessing and evidence-tracing rules.
4,376 · popularity - Rank 12View Agent SkillPossible
council
Runs a model-diverse subagent council to investigate one problem from multiple perspectives, compare findings, and synthesize a recommendation.
26,732 · popularity - Rank 13View Agent SkillPossible
grounding-before-coding
Ground-first discipline for investigation: map real code and data, quote file:line evidence, never guess conventions, and reproduce before fixing.
12,429 · popularity - Rank 14View Agent SkillPossible
clickhouse-managed-postgres-rca
Evidence-based RCA workflow for ClickHouse-managed Postgres: scrapes Prometheus metrics and slow-query patterns, then recommends (not applies) a fix.
6,373 · popularity - Rank 15View Agent SkillPossible
grill-with-docs
A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design, producing ADRs and a glossary as it goes. Delegates to grilling and domain-modeling skills.
1,123,345 · popularity - Rank 16View Agent SkillPossible
technical-writing
House style for technical documents: conclusion-first structure, truth and sourcing rules, and a banned-constructions list. Foundation for document-type skills.
12,920 · popularity - Rank 17View Agent SkillPossible
answer-me-with-html
NotableTurns an answer into a one-page visual HTML explainer: the model writes a short Markdown draft and the bundled CLI builds one page. Use it proactively and liberally, without being asked, whenever a page would help the reader more than plain text, even if plain text would also work: any explanation of how something works or how parts relate (flow, request path, architecture, code or folder structure, state machine, lifecycle, history); any comparison, trade-off or decision with pros and cons; any diagnosis, review or investigation, especially with several causes or findings to rank; any answer with a table, a numbered or ranked list, steps, branches or several sections; or when the user says "I don't get it / draw it / explain visually / 讲讲原理 / 没看懂 / 画个图". When in doubt, use it: a page is quick and cheap to make. Also for explainer videos ("make a video", "做个视频") and for changing its settings. Skip only for small talk, a trivial one-line answer, or when the user asks for plain text.
- Rank 18View Agent SkillDirect
notion-research-documentation
OfficialResearch across Notion and synthesize into structured documentation; use when gathering info from multiple Notion sources to produce briefs, comparisons, or reports with citations.
- Rank 19View Agent SkillDirect
fact-check
NotableImprove factual reliability while creating or reviewing a course or supplied content. Use when the user asks to fact-check, verify accuracy, reduce hallucinations, make a reliable course, or mentions 事实性错误、知识性错误、专业知识准确性、可靠性. During creation, checks the completed pages before delivery; on existing content, returns a short evidence-backed report and lets the user choose what to fix. Not for grammar, style, or layout. Combine with deep-research when current evidence is the course's main subject.
- Rank 20View Agent SkillPossible
wiki-architect
OfficialAnalyzes code repositories and generates hierarchical documentation structures with onboarding guides. Use when the user wants to create a wiki, generate documentation, map a codebase structure, or understand a project's architecture at a high level.
- Rank 21View Agent SkillPossible
wiki-researcher
OfficialConducts multi-turn iterative deep research on specific topics within a codebase with zero tolerance for shallow analysis. Use when the user wants an in-depth investigation, needs to understand how something works across multiple files, or asks for comprehensive analysis of a specific system or pattern.
- Rank 22View Agent SkillPossible
ai-research-explore
NotableRigor Explore compatible skill slug for meaningful and potentially novel deep learning research candidates. Use when the researcher has chosen the task family, dataset, benchmark, evaluation method, provided SOTA references, and wants candidate-only exploration on top of `current_research` with auditable repo understanding, idea gating, fair comparison, and governed experiments written to `explore_outputs/`. Do not use for README-first trusted reproduction, open-ended direction finding, narrow code-only or run-only exploration, passive repo analysis, verified novelty claims, or implicit experi
311,248 · popularity - Rank 23View Agent SkillPossible
analyze-project
NotableRigor Analyze / Rigor Audit read-only skill for deep learning research repositories. Use when the user wants to read and understand a repository, inspect model structure and training or inference entrypoints, review configs and insertion points, or flag suspicious implementation patterns without modifying code or running heavy jobs. Do not use for active command execution, broad refactoring, speculative code adaptation, or automatic bug fixing.
311,025 · popularity - Rank 24View Agent SkillPossible
customer-research
NotableWhen the user wants to conduct, analyze, or synthesize customer research. Use when the user mentions "customer research," "ICP research," "talk to customers," "analyze transcripts," "customer interviews," "survey analysis," "support ticket analysis," "voice of customer," "VOC," "build personas," "customer personas," "jobs to be done," "JTBD," "what do customers say," "what are customers struggling with," "Reddit mining," "G2 reviews," "review mining," "digital watering holes," "community research," "forum research," "competitor reviews," "customer sentiment," "PMF survey," "product/market fit
95,039 · popularity - Rank 25View Agent SkillPossible
amazon-product-research
NotableComprehensive product research and opportunity analysis for Amazon sellers. Analyzes demand, competition, profit potential, market entry barriers, and validates product ideas. Covers product sourcing, pricing strategy, and go-to-market planning. Use when the user asks about researching a product to sell, validating product ideas, product opportunity analysis, market research for Amazon, competition analysis, profit potential, should I sell this product, product viability, or any general product research questions.
77,809 · popularity - Rank 26View Agent SkillPossible
competitor-profiling
NotableWhen the user wants to research, profile, or analyze competitors from their URLs. Also use when the user mentions 'competitor profile,' 'competitor research,' 'competitor analysis,' 'profile this competitor,' 'analyze competitor,' 'competitive intelligence,' 'competitor deep dive,' 'who are my competitors,' 'competitor landscape,' 'competitor dossier,' 'competitive audit,' or 'research these competitors.' Input is a list of competitor URLs. Output is structured competitor profile markdown files. For creating comparison/alternative pages from profiles, see competitors. For sales-specific battle
75,314 · popularity - Rank 27View Agent SkillPossible
investigate-first
NotableDiagnose ambiguous failures before editing. Use for unknown causes, intermittent behavior, performance regressions, or investigations needing evidence-ranked hypotheses.
54,869 · popularity - Rank 28View Agent SkillPossible
github-deep-research
Conduct multi-round deep research on any GitHub Repo. Use when users request comprehensive analysis, timeline reconstruction, competitive analysis, or in-depth investigation of GitHub. Produces structured markdown reports with executive summaries, chronological timelines, metrics analysis, and…
2,847 · popularity - Rank 29View Agent SkillPossible
planning-with-files
NotablePersistent file-based planning for multi-step AI-agent work. Keeps task_plan.md, findings.md, and progress.md on disk; lifecycle hooks inject selected project planning context. Automatic recovery reads project planning files only. Explicit session-catchup.py --metadata reads same-project local agent session records and emits aggregate counts only; --replay may emit bounded nonce-framed excerpts. Optional gated mode can request continuation only when the host supports it and never runs commands declared in Markdown. The skill has no network upload path. Use for research or work needing 5+ tool calls.
What this topic covers
Each sub-topic groups Agent Skills for a specific situation.
- Scoping & questions
- Define what you are actually trying to answer.
- Sourcing
- Find and collect candidate sources.
- Evidence extraction
- Pull the specific claims that matter, not whole pages.
- Contradiction & gaps
- Track where sources disagree or come up short.
- Synthesis
- Turn evidence into an argument.
- Citation & defensibility
- Make the result checkable and reusable.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between a deep research skill and just asking an agent a question?
- A deep research skill treats the task as an evidence workflow: scope it, gather sources, extract evidence, resolve contradictions, then synthesize with citations. Asking a single question gets you one answer, with no separate stages for sourcing or defensibility.
- How is the ranked list ordered?
- The list is ranked by observed search demand, with direct matches to the topic placed first and a cap on how many skills any single publisher can occupy. That keeps the top of the page responsive to what developers are actually looking for.
- Which sub-topic should I start with?
- Start with the stage of your workflow that fails most often. Scoping and questions come first if you struggle to define the question, sourcing and evidence extraction if collection is the bottleneck, and contradiction, synthesis, or citation if the problem is turning material into a defensible argument.
- Can I combine several deep research skills?
- The sub-topics are distinct stages, so skills in different stages can complement each other across a single research run. Within one stage, pick the single skill whose described behavior matches your need instead of layering overlapping ones.
How to install an Agent Skill
Start with the first skill on this page. Claude Code reads a SKILL.md once it is in the skills directory:
- Claude Code — copy the SKILL.md for parallel-web into ~/.claude/skills/parallel-web/ for yourself, or .claude/skills/parallel-web/ to share it with a project.
- From the registry — run npx skills add k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills@parallel-web.
- Or download parallel-web from its source and place that SKILL.md in the directory above.
How to choose Check the source and the skill’s own instructions before you install. Official and Notable describe where a skill comes from.