BC autonomous-research
An 18-agent pipeline that turns one topic line into a drafted research paper, literature review, or thesis chapter. Finds real sources at Crossref and OpenAlex, drafts each section against them, attacks its own draft for weak claims, then compiles citations deterministically so in-text markers map one to one onto the bibliography and every printed DOI resolved at Crossref or DataCite. Every agent is a markdown file you can open and edit. Pure stdlib, no API key, no account. Use when someone asks to write a research paper, do a literature review, draft a thesis chapter, find sources on a topic and write them up, or names opendraft or openpaper.
An 18-agent pipeline that turns one topic line into a drafted research paper, literature review, or thesis chapter.
As a process C 54/100 · Has gaps — weak spots: result and completion, when it triggers, inputs and preconditions
How to improve
- The SKILL.md body is over 5,000 tokens: move reference detail into references/ and load it when needed.
- Your own cases (evals/evals.json, 4–6 real requests with expected answers): the full check would then run those instead of a model-drafted suite.
- A spec.yaml with trigger phrases and assertions — a behaviour contract for CI; `skilltest init` writes a template.
Guard findings · 0
✓ No critical or high findings
Files scanned: 35. Evidence is masked. Grey chips explain why severity was lowered.
Against the Agent Skills spec
- warning
body-longSKILL.md body ≈ 7990 tokens (recommended < 5000); move details to references/
Process rating: all ten parameters 54/100
- 0Result and completion. Does not say what the result is
- 0Inputs and preconditions. Does not say what the process needs to start
- 20When it triggers. No condition that starts the skill
- 30Running it twice. 12 mutating operations with no state check
- 60Tools and files. Uses tools (bash, python) that frontmatter does not declare
- 70Execution cost. Instruction body is 7990 tokens
- 100Steps. 30 steps
- 100Failures and branches. 2 branches, has a failure section
- 100Consistency. Name and required fields are in place
- 100Progress reporting. Reports progress
- medium Safety rules and hard prohibitions inside a skill: they belong in the system prompt, here they protect nothing
- low 20 top-level sections: this looks like several domains in one skill
Everything here is measured from the skill text rather than judged by a model, so the numbers are checkable. A parameter weighs more when it is a more common reason for the process to stall.
Quality signals
- +5Description has no quoted example phrases that should trigger the skill
- +4Description does not say when NOT to use the skill (false activations)
- +3Output format is not stated: the model decides each time
- +2Single-language instructions
- +3Description length 651: enough signal without eating the budget
- +4Structure: 21 headings
- +3Step-by-step instructions: 30 items
- +4Has examples (11 code blocks)
- +4Reference files are cited in the instructions (2 of 2)
- +3All 7 scripts are documented
- +1License stated
Quality base 70; lint remarks subtract, signals add up to 100. Result: 82.