Agent Skill
Empirical Playbook skill
empirical-playbookbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skillsskills/11-James-Traina-compound-science/skills/empirical-playbook/SKILL.md
This skill covers applied microeconomic empirical methods and research design. Use when the user is selecting an identification strategy, comparing estimators, running diagnostics, designing a research study, or evaluating an empirical strategy. Triggers on "which method", "what estimator", "how to choose", "method comparison", "empirical strategy", "research design", "applied micro", "identification strategy", "power analysis", "design-based", "model-based", "minimum detectable effect", "specification".
always on
105 tokname + description
once used
3,082 tokSKILL.md body
bundled files
565 KB
repo stars
4.7kGitHub
Install the Empirical Playbook skill
Skills CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others)
npx skills add https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill empirical-playbook
Claude Code, by hand (all projects)
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git /tmp/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills cp -R /tmp/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/skills/11-James-Traina-compound-science/skills/empirical-playbook ~/.claude/skills/empirical-playbook
For one project only, copy the folder into .claude/skills/ in that project instead. The agent picks it up when a task matches its description.
What it costs your context
Agent Skills load in three steps. Tokens counted with the o200k tokenizer; your model's count will differ a little.
| When | What loads | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Every session | Name and description | 105 tok |
| When the agent uses it | The SKILL.md instructions | 3,082 tok |
| Only if opened | 5 bundled files (65 KB) | varies |
Until it is used, empirical-playbook costs about 13× less than the median MCP server we measured (1,363 tokens on every turn). Installing all 150 skills from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills would load 14,926 tokens of descriptions. Skills vs MCP study
Checks
Our checks found nothing to flag: it follows the Agent Skills specification's naming and size guidelines and doesn't pipe downloads into a shell.
Checked 2026-10-22 · method
What's inside
The headings of its SKILL.md. Read the full file on GitHub.
- Applied Micro Toolkit
- When to Use This Skill
- Method Selection Decision Tree
- Step 1: What is your source of variation?
- Step 2: Refinements Within Method Families
- Standard Diagnostics by Method
- Inference Frameworks
- Clustering Decision Rule
- Design-Based vs Model-Based Inference
- Power Analysis
- Research Design Checklist
- Before Touching Data
- During Analysis
- Before Submission
- Common Pitfalls
- Bad Controls
- Staggered DiD with Heterogeneous Effects
- Forbidden Regressions
- Integration
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Classical end-to-end empirical analysis workflow in the traditional Python econometric stack — pandas + numpy + scipy + statsmodels + linearmodels + pyfixest + rdrobust + econml + causalml + matplotlib/seaborn. **Defaults to economics empirical-paper style** (AER / QJE / AEJ) — every run produces a publication-ready output set with a multi-column regression table (M1→M6 progressive controls/FE) as the centerpiece, plus Table 1 (descriptives), mechanism / heterogeneity / robustness tables, and event-study + coefficient + trend figures. Covers the full 8-step pipeline an applied economist or quantitative social scientist runs on every paper — (1) data cleaning, (2) variable construction & transformation, (3) descriptive statistics & Table 1, (4) statistical diagnostic tests, (5) baseline empirical modeling, (6) robustness battery, (7) further analysis (mechanism, heterogeneity, mediation, moderation), (8) publication-ready tables & figures. **Also covers two parallel domain modes that share the same 8-step scaffolding** — **Mode A — Epidemiology / public health** (target-trial emulation via `zepid` / hand-rolled `pandas`, IPTW + g-formula + TMLE doubly-robust triplet via `zepid` / `econml` / `lifelines`, Mendelian randomization via `pymr` / `mrtool` (or `rpy2` → `MendelianRandomization`/`TwoSampleMR`), KM / AFT / Cox survival via `lifelines`, E-value sensitivity, principal stratification — STROBE / TRIPOD reporting), and **Mode B — ML causal inference** (DML via `econml.dml` / `doubleml`, S/T/X/R/DR meta-learners via `econml.metalearners` / `causalml`, causal forest via `econml.grf` / `causalml`, Dragonnet / TARNet / CEVAE neural causal via `causalml`, BCF via `pymc-bart` / `bcf-py`, matrix completion, CATE distribution + policy tree via `econml.policy` / `policytree-py`, off-policy evaluation, conformal causal via `mapie`, fairness audit via `fairlearn`, DAG learning via `causal-learn` / `cdt` / LLM-assisted). Prescribes which library to reach for at each step, shows the canonical code, and links to deeper `references/` files for variant-specific patterns. Use when the user asks for a **complete empirical analysis** in Python, wants to replicate an applied-economics paper from scratch, needs a reproducible workflow that is NOT opinionated on any single vertical package (contrast with StatsPAI), wants explicit control over every estimator and diagnostic, or asks "how do I write a full empirical pipeline in Python?". Also triggers when the user names a specific classical step in isolation — "winsorize at 1/99%", "run Breusch-Pagan", "build a Table 1 balance table", "do a placebo test", "event study plot", "mediation analysis" — and wants it wired into the broader pipeline. Mode A triggers on "target trial emulation", "IPTW", "TMLE", "Mendelian randomization", "STROBE", "公共健康", "流行病学". Mode B triggers on "DML", "double machine learning", "causal forest", "meta-learner", "Dragonnet", "BCF", "policy tree", "conformal causal", "fairness audit", "因果机器学习".
4.7k779 tok idle · 31,086 in use - Full-empirical-analysis-skill-Rbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills
Classical end-to-end empirical analysis workflow in the modern tidyverse + econometrics R ecosystem — dplyr + tidyr + haven + fixest + sandwich + lmtest + clubSandwich + AER + ivreg + did + bacondecomp + HonestDiD + eventstudyr + rdrobust + rddensity + Synth + gsynth + synthdid + MatchIt + WeightIt + cobalt + ebal + grf + DoubleML + mediation + marginaleffects + modelsummary + kableExtra + gt + ggplot2 + ggpubr + cowplot + binsreg. **Defaults to economics empirical-paper style** (AER / QJE / AEJ) — every run produces a publication-ready output set with a multi-column regression table (M1→M6 progressive controls/FE) as the centerpiece, plus Table 1 (descriptives), mechanism / heterogeneity / robustness tables, and event-study + coefficient + trend figures. Covers the full 8-step R pipeline an applied economist runs on every paper — (1) data import & cleaning (read_dta/read_csv, naniar, janitor, validate-merges), (2) variable construction (mutate/across/winsorize/group_by + lag/lead with dplyr), (3) descriptive statistics & Table 1 (gtsummary, modelsummary::datasummary, tableone), (4) classical diagnostic tests (shapiro/jarque.bera.test/bptest/dwtest/bgtest/vif/adf.test/kpss.test/Hausman), (5) baseline modeling (fixest::feols, ivreg, did::att_gt, eventstudyr, sun_ab, did_imputation, synthdid, rdrobust, MatchIt, WeightIt, grf::causal_forest, DoubleML, mediation), (6) robustness battery (modelsummary stack, clubSandwich CRSE, fwildclusterboot, ri2, robomit Oster, bacondecomp, HonestDiD), (7) further analysis (interactions + marginaleffects, mediation::mediate, gsem via lavaan, dose-response splines, grf CATE), (8) publication-ready tables & figures (modelsummary, kableExtra, gt, stargazer, texreg, flextable to LaTeX/Word/HTML; ggplot2 + ggpubr + cowplot + binsreg + iplot for figures). **Also covers two parallel domain modes that share the same 8-step scaffolding** — **Mode A — Epidemiology / public health** (target-trial emulation, IPTW + g-formula + TMLE doubly-robust triplet via `WeightIt` / `gfoRmula` / `tmle` / `ltmle`, Mendelian randomization via `MendelianRandomization` / `TwoSampleMR` / `MRPRESSO`, KM / Cox / AFT / RMST survival via `survival` / `survminer` / `flexsurv`, E-value sensitivity via `EValue`, principal stratification — STROBE / TRIPOD reporting), and **Mode B — ML causal inference** (DML via `DoubleML`, S/T/X/R/DR meta-learners via `causalweight` / `grf`, causal forest via `grf::causal_forest`, BART/BCF via `bartCause` / `bcf`, matrix completion via `MCPanel`, CATE distribution + policy tree via `policytree`, off-policy evaluation, conformal causal via `conformalInference` / `cfcausal`, fairness audit via `fairmodels`, DAG learning via `pcalg` / `bnlearn` / LLM-assisted). Use when the user asks for a complete R empirical analysis, wants a tidyverse-style reproducible R script / Quarto workflow, prefers fixest over reghdfe, needs the R counterpart to StatsPAI / 00.1 / 00.2, or names a specific R step in isolation ("feols with cluster", "MatchIt nearest neighbor", "bacondecomp in R", "gtsummary table 1", "modelsummary to Word"). Mode A triggers on "target trial emulation R", "tmle ltmle", "MendelianRandomization", "TwoSampleMR", "MRPRESSO", "survival cox AFT", "STROBE R", "EValue R", "公共健康 R", "流行病学 R". Mode B triggers on "DoubleML R", "grf causal forest", "policytree", "bartCause bcf", "conformal causal R", "fairmodels", "pcalg NOTEARS", "因果机器学习 R".
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