Harvard Agentic Science — Shared Skills

Skills are reusable agent files that give Claude Code or Codex a specific role and set of instructions. Each skill has two files:

• skill-name.md — The agent file. This is what Claude reads. It contains frontmatter (name, description, model) and the agent's instructions. You drop this into .claude/agents/ in your project.
• description.md — A human-readable description. This explains what the skill does, how to use it, and what options it has. This is what you read when deciding whether to download it.

Browse the skills/ directory to see what is available.

Using a skill

1. Find a skill in skills/ that fits your task.
2. Read the description.md to see what it does.
3. Copy the agent .md file to .claude/agents/ in your project.
4. Run it by name: "run the paper-reviewer agent."

Or just ask Claude to do it:

Go to https://github.com/Harvard-Agentic-Science/Skills and download the paper-reviewer skill. Save it to .claude/agents/paper-reviewer.md in my project.

Contributing

Each skill needs both files: the agent file and the description. Fork the repo, add a folder under skills/ with both, and open a pull request. Use the templates in template/ as a starting point:

• template/skill-template.md — Template for the agent file
• template/description-template.md — Template for the description

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full walkthrough.

More context

For background on agentic workflows and how skills fit into a research workflow, visit https://ai.physics.harvard.edu