Research Agent Skill
Help your AI agent search papers, track blogs, build a knowledge base, check prediction market data, and assist with research writing.
What It Does
Research Agent Skill is a research toolbox for AI agents.
In simple words, it helps your agent do research work more systematically.
Instead of asking the AI to randomly search and summarize things, this skill gives it a set of research workflows. It can look for academic papers, monitor blogs, organize knowledge into markdown notes, check market probabilities, and support long-form research writing.
Why It Is Useful
Most people use AI research like this:
Search this topic → summarize it → forget everything next time
This skill helps the agent work more like this:
Find sources → organize notes → compare ideas → keep useful knowledge → reuse it later
That makes it useful for anyone who needs to understand a topic deeply over time.
Included Research Abilities
This skill package includes several sub-skills.
1. arXiv Research
Search academic papers from arXiv.
Good for:
- Finding AI / ML papers
- Searching papers by keyword
- Searching by author
- Looking up a specific arXiv paper ID
- Reading abstracts
- Finding related academic work
Example use cases:
Find recent papers about AI agents and tool use.
Search arXiv papers about reinforcement learning from human feedback.
Find papers by Andrej Karpathy.
2. Blogwatcher
Track blogs, RSS feeds, and new articles.
Good for:
- Following engineering blogs
- Tracking AI company updates
- Watching competitor blogs
- Monitoring research labs
- Collecting new article links
- Marking articles as read or unread
Example use cases:
Track new posts from the OpenAI blog and Anthropic blog.
Show me unread articles from the blogs I follow.
Scan my tracked blogs and list what is new.
3. LLM Wiki
Build a long-term markdown knowledge base.
This is like giving your agent a research notebook.
It can save important sources, create topic pages, link related ideas, and keep everything organized as markdown files.
Good for:
- Building a personal research wiki
- Organizing AI papers
- Creating a startup research database
- Tracking competitors
- Turning scattered notes into structured knowledge
- Building an Obsidian-style knowledge base
Example use cases:
Create a wiki for AI video generation research.
Add this article to my knowledge base and summarize the key ideas.
What does my wiki already know about AI agents?
4. Polymarket Research
Query public prediction market data from Polymarket.
Good for:
- Checking market-implied probabilities
- Looking up public prediction markets
- Seeing how likely traders think an event is
- Tracking changes in market sentiment
- Reading price and volume data
Example use cases:
What does Polymarket think about this event?
Find prediction markets related to the US election.
Show the current probability and trading volume for this market.
Important note:
This skill is read-only. It can query public market data, but it does not place trades.
5. Research Paper Writing
Assist with writing academic or technical research papers.
Good for:
- Literature review
- Experiment planning
- Paper structure
- Abstract writing
- Related work writing
- Research framing
- Reviewer-style self-review
- Submission preparation
Example use cases:
Help me turn this experiment into a research paper outline.
Write a related work section based on these papers.
Review this paper draft like a NeurIPS reviewer.
Best For
This skill is best for people who often need to research, compare, track, or write about complex topics.
It is especially useful for:
- AI researchers
- Indie hackers doing market research
- SEO researchers
- Growth marketers
- Content researchers
- Startup founders
- Students
- Technical writers
- People building a personal knowledge base
Common Use Cases
Academic Research
Use it to search papers, read abstracts, compare methods, and build a literature review.
Find 10 recent papers about retrieval augmented generation and summarize the main directions.
Market Research
Use it to track blogs, competitors, public signals, and prediction markets.
Monitor competitor blogs and summarize important product updates.
Knowledge Management
Use it to turn scattered articles, papers, and notes into a structured markdown wiki.
Create a knowledge base about AI SEO and organize my notes into topics.
Writing Support
Use it to help structure long-form research articles, whitepapers, reports, or academic papers.
Help me write a research report about AI agent skills.
How a Beginner Can Understand It
Think of this skill as a research assistant with five jobs:
| Job | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Paper Finder | Finds academic papers |
| Blog Tracker | Watches blogs and RSS feeds |
| Knowledge Librarian | Organizes notes into a markdown wiki |
| Market Signal Reader | Reads prediction market data |
| Research Writer | Helps write structured research papers |
What Problem It Solves
Without this skill, AI research can become messy.
You ask a question, get an answer, then the context disappears.
With this skill, the agent has a better research workflow:
- Find useful sources
- Extract useful information
- Save important knowledge
- Link related ideas
- Reuse previous research later
- Help turn findings into reports or papers
Example Workflow
A typical research workflow could look like this:
- Search arXiv for recent AI agent papers
- Pick the most relevant papers
- Save key findings into an LLM Wiki
- Track related blogs for future updates
- Compare different methods
- Write a research summary
Beginner Friendly Examples
Example 1: Research a new topic
Research AI agents for SEO. Find useful papers, blog posts, and organize the key ideas.
Example 2: Track an industry
Track major AI company blogs and tell me when there are new updates.
Example 3: Build a knowledge base
Create a markdown wiki for my AI growth research notes.
Example 4: Write a report
Help me write a structured report about the current state of AI video generation.
Example 5: Find academic support
Find papers that support the claim that tool-using agents improve task completion.
Requirements
Some sub-skills work with simple web APIs and do not need API keys.
Some features may require command line tools, local files, or extra setup depending on how you use them.
For most beginners, the easiest way to start is:
npx skills add https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/tree/main/skills/research
Then ask the agent to use the research skill for a specific task.
Good Prompts to Try
Use the research skill to find recent papers about AI agents.
Use the research skill to create a beginner-friendly summary of this topic.
Use the research skill to build a small markdown knowledge base from these links.
Use the research skill to compare these three papers.
Use the research skill to monitor these blogs and summarize new updates.
Limitations
- It still needs good prompts from the user.
- Research quality depends on the quality of sources.
- Some workflows require command line tools.
- It may need extra setup for blog tracking or local wiki management.
- It does not automatically guarantee truth. Important claims still need source checking.
- Polymarket support is read-only and cannot place trades.
Best Simple Description
Research Agent Skill turns an AI agent into a more organized research assistant.
It can find papers, track useful sources, build a markdown knowledge base, check public market signals, and help turn research into structured writing.