How to use the Research Idea Brainstorming agent skill

What the skill makes the agent do

The skill provides structured ideation frameworks, which are step-by-step lenses for finding research directions. Its stated purpose is to help researchers move from vague curiosity to concrete, defensible research proposals. The SKILL.md describes ten lenses. The excerpt we reviewed covers five of them: problem-first versus solution-first thinking, the abstraction ladder, tension and contradiction hunting, cross-pollination from other fields, and the 'What Changed?' principle.

Each lens comes with a workflow and, in several cases, self-check questions. For example, the problem-first lens asks you to write your idea in one sentence, classify it as problem-first or solution-first, and then check whether the problem actually matters and who suffers from it.

• Problem-first vs. solution-first: checks whether the motivation is a real need or a tool looking for an application.
• Abstraction ladder: move a result up to a general principle, down to a constrained instance, or sideways into another field.
• Tension hunting: finds pairs of goals, such as performance and efficiency, that are often treated as trade-offs.
• Cross-pollination: borrows structural ideas from fields such as neuroscience, physics, economics, ecology, linguistics, and control theory.
• What Changed?: revisits older problems when compute, scale, data, regulation, or tooling has shifted.

Install the skill from the download page

The skill is distributed as a ZIP file from the page where you found this guide. Its only listed file is SKILL.md. There are two ways to install it, depending on how you use your agent.

For Claude Code, unzip the download into a skills folder. Use ~/.claude/skills/ to make the skill available to you everywhere, or a project's .claude/skills/ folder to make it available only inside that project.

In the Claude apps, you can upload the ZIP instead. Open Settings, go to Capabilities, then Skills, and add the skill there.

• Personal install: unzip into ~/.claude/skills/
• Project install: unzip into the project's .claude/skills/ folder
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload the ZIP

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special command. The skill's description says to use it when you are exploring new problem spaces, pivoting between projects, or looking for novel angles on existing work. Describe your situation in plain language and the agent should pick up the skill.

Be specific about your situation. Mention what you are working on, what feels stuck, and whether you want to explore or evaluate a particular idea. The more context you give, the more useful the framework walkthrough will be.

• I'm starting a new research direction in retrieval. Help me explore the space with structured frameworks.
• I've hit a wall on my current project. Give me fresh angles on this existing work.
• I have a half-formed idea about model compression. Help me see whether it has real potential.
• I'm preparing a brainstorming session with my lab. Give me a structured agenda.
• I want to find trade-offs in my area that might be worth resolving.

What the skill does not do

The skill is a prompt-based guide only. It does not run code and does not fetch outside information. The SKILL.md lists no required dependencies, the skill does not run scripts, and it does not use the network.

It also does not check novelty. It generates ideas, but it does not search papers to confirm that an idea is unexplored. The skill tells you to use other skills for experimental design or methodology, and it redirects literature reviews to a separate literature-review skill, referenced as scientific-skills:literature-review.

• No code execution and no outside lookups
• No verified novelty checks against the literature
• Redirects experimental design to domain-specific skills
• Redirects literature reviews to scientific-skills:literature-review

Tips for getting useful output

Run one lens at a time when you are starting out. Combining lenses works too, but a single focused lens is easier to check. Treat the self-check questions as real questions. The SKILL.md asks, for instance, whether you can name a specific person or community who needs the work, and whether a claimed tension has been confirmed rather than assumed.

Verify the output yourself. The skill helps you structure thinking, but any candidate direction still needs a literature search and expert judgement before you commit time to it.

• Start with one sentence describing your current focus.
• Answer the self-check questions honestly before moving on.
• Use the output as an agenda for a group session.
• Check every proposed novelty claim against the literature yourself.