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Agent Skill

Research Proposal skill

research-proposalbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skillsskills/02-luwill-research-skills/research-proposal/SKILL.md

Generate academic research proposals for PhD applications. Use when user asks to "write a research proposal", "create PhD proposal", "generate research plan", "撰写研究计划", "写博士申请", "doctoral proposal", or mentions specific research topics for PhD application. Supports STEM, humanities, and social sciences with field-specific adaptations. Follows Nature Reviews-style academic writing conventions. Supports both English and Chinese output based on user preference.

4.7k

always on

94 tokname + description

once used

4,141 tokSKILL.md body

bundled files

573 KB

repo stars

4.7kGitHub

Install the Research Proposal skill

Skills CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others)

npx skills add https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill research-proposal

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/02-luwill-research-skills/research-proposal ~/.claude/skills/research-proposal

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.

WhenWhat loadsCost
Every sessionName and description94 tok
When the agent uses itThe SKILL.md instructions4,141 tok
Only if opened5 bundled files (73 KB)varies

Until it is used, research-proposal costs about 15× 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

  • The instructions are over 500 lines; the specification suggests moving detail into reference files.

Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): WebSearch, Read, Write, Edit, AskUserQuestion, Task, Glob, Grep, mcp__zotero__zotero_search_items, mcp__zotero__zotero_get_item_metadata, mcp__zotero__zotero_get_item_fulltext, mcp__zotero__zotero_get_annotations, mcp__zotero__zotero_get_notes, mcp__zotero__zotero_search_notes, mcp__zotero__zotero_semantic_search, mcp__zotero__zotero_advanced_search. The agent can use these without asking while the skill is active.

Checked 2026-10-22 · method

What's inside

The headings of its SKILL.md. Read the full file on GitHub.

  • Research Proposal Generator
  • Overview
  • Phase 1: Requirements Gathering
  • Required Information
  • Optional Information
  • Example Questions
  • Phase 2: Literature Collection
  • Literature Sources Strategy
  • Using WebSearch
  • Using Zotero MCP
  • Literature Organization
  • Phase 3: Outline Generation
  • Proposal Structure by Domain
  • Standard Outline Template
  • User Confirmation
  • Phase 4: Content Writing
  • Writing Style Guidelines
  • Citation Formatting
  • Figure Suggestions
  • Language-Specific Considerations
  • Phase 5: Output and Review
  • File Generation
  • Quality Checklist
  • Format Conversion Guidance

More skills from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

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  1. Answering Research Questionsbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Main orchestration workflow for systematic literature research - search, evaluate, traverse, synthesize

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  2. Building Paper Screening Rubricsbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Collaboratively build and refine paper screening rubrics through brainstorming, test-driven development, and iterative feedback

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  3. Checking ChEMBL for Structured SAR Databrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Check if medicinal chemistry papers are in ChEMBL database to access curated bioactivity data

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  4. Cleaning Up Research Sessionsbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Safely remove intermediate files from completed research sessions while preserving important data

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  5. Evaluating Paper Relevancebrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Two-stage paper screening - abstract scoring then deep dive for specific data extraction

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  6. Finding Open Access Papersbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Use Unpaywall API to find free full-text versions of paywalled papers

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  7. Full-empirical-analysis-skillbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    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".

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  8. 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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