A reusable Claude skill for building and editing expositions in the Research Catalogue (RC) graphical editor programmatically — the platform behind JAR (Journal for Artistic Research).
RC's graphical editor is a free-form canvas with no public API. Laying out a rich exposition by hand means dragging, sizing, and styling hundreds of "tools" (text, image, video, slideshow, PDF, shape) one at a time. This skill documents the editor's reverse-engineered internals so an automation agent can do it in bulk — and, crucially, do it in a way that persists across reload (the non-obvious part).
It was distilled while rebuilding a real research website as a JAR-ready RC exposition (~68 content nodes + ~39 connector threads), built entirely from native RC tools so the work stays self-contained and archivable — the way RC and JAR are designed to be used.
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
SKILL.md |
Skill entry point — overview, editor internals, when to use, quick start. |
reference/rest-api.md |
The editor's own REST endpoints — best for bulk/headless: create/edit/delete tools, media upload, shape connectors, batch z-order, video/text options. |
reference/gestures.md |
In-page editor calls — required for inline TinyMCE text & fonts; also create-drag, jQuery-UI move/resize, and the style/border dialog. |
reference/gotchas.md |
The persistence model and ~10 failure modes that make changes silently revert or sweeps under-count. |
scripts/rc-helpers.js |
A re-injectable window.__RC helper bundle wrapping both layers. |
You need a browser-automation context that can run JS in the page and read it back — e.g. Chrome DevTools MCP, Playwright/Puppeteer, or the browser console — and you must be logged in to RC.
- Open your exposition's editor page:
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/editor/<researchId>/<weaveId>. - Inject
scripts/rc-helpers.jsonce (it's lost on reload) → exposeswindow.__RC. - Use the REST helpers (
__RC.rest.*) for bulk create/edit/connect/upload; use the in-page helpers (__RC.editor.*) for text, fonts, the style/border dialog, and move/resize. - Reload and verify after each batch — see
reference/gotchas.md.
Copy this directory into a skills location Claude discovers, e.g.:
# personal (all your projects)
cp -r rc-editor-skill ~/.claude/skills/rc-editor
# or per-project
cp -r rc-editor-skill <your-repo>/.claude/skills/rc-editorClaude will surface the skill (by its SKILL.md description) when a task involves the
Research Catalogue editor.
Reverse-engineered from the live editor by observing its own network calls and widget behaviour. Unofficial — not affiliated with or endorsed by the Research Catalogue, the Society for Artistic Research, or JAR. The editor's internals can change at any time; treat every endpoint/field name as something to re-verify against the current editor.
Contributions welcome — especially confirmations/corrections against newer RC versions.
MIT.