Cross-National Comparative Designer Agent Skill

Design cross-national survey experiments: power, equivalence, localization.

Context cost
8.9k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
2 files · 35.7 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
Source-availablethe author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Design cross-national survey experiments: power, equivalence, localization.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

data science
Filed under

Research

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md18.4 kB · preview
--- name: cross-national-design argument-hint: "[describe your cross-national study or country selection]" ---
7# Cross-National Comparative Designer
8
9**Related skills.** This skill composes with hypothesis-building (per-country predictions and estimands), survey-design (question wording, acquiescence, sensitivity), conjoint-design (origin-country stimuli, power), methods-reporting (per-country CONSORT, APSA/JARS/DA-RT), and pre-registration-writing (study-level PAP with per-country tiers).
10
11**Reference files.** reference/example-4-country-immigration.md -- worked four-country immigration-conjoint cascade covering case-selection logic, shared attributes with origin-country calibration, the full TRAPD translation protocol, per-country SESOI/predictions, and a pooled-vs-per-country analysis table.
12
13## Instructions
14
15### 1. Case Selection and Theoretical Justification
16- **Per-Country Predictions Before Case Selection (Why -> If-Then):** Before finalizing the country set, articulate, for each candidate case, the specific pattern of results that would *support* the theoretical claim versus *disconfirm* it. Cross-national leverage comes from the contrast between predicted country-level patterns, not from running the same experiment in multiple places and describing what happens. If a case cannot be tied to a distinct, falsifiable prediction, it is decorative rather than diagnostic. See hypothesis-building for the Why -> If-Then funnel and estimand specification.
17- **Variation by Design:** Cases should be selected to vary on theoretically relevant dimensions (e.g., regime type, institutional structure, immigration history, partisan polarization), not for convenience or data availability. Each case should serve a specific theoretical function identified in the step above.
18- **Case Selection Table:** Produce a summary table listing each country, its relevant contextual features (e.g., immigration salience, institutional architecture, regime type), the per-country prediction, and the specific motivation for its inclusion. This table belongs in the PAP and should be referenced in the narrative.
19- **Avoid the "Most Similar" Trap:** Cross-national designs are often most informative when cases are deliberately diverse. Including cases that vary on regime type (e.g., democracy vs. hybrid regime) or institutional structure (e.g., parliamentary vs. presidential) enables stronger tests of whether a theoretical mechanism generalizes beyond a single political context.
20- **Typical Case Count (3--5):** For survey experiments with ~2,500 respondents per country, 3--5 cases is a common range in published work that balances theoretical leverage with practical feasibility (budget, translation, vendor logistics). Fewer than 3 limits comparison; more than 5 strains resources without proportional analytical gain. Treat this as a planning heuristic rather than a rule and tie the final count to the per-country predictions above.
21- **Information Environment Variation:** The information environment differs across countries -- media systems, political knowledge levels, and the accessibility of policy information vary. A treatment that is "informative" in one context may be redundant or incomprehensible in another. Document the expected information environment per country and consider how it affects treatment interpretation (Druckman 2022).
22
23### 2. Instrument Localization
24- **Conceptual Equivalence over Literal Translation:** The goal is not identical wording across countries but equivalent conceptual meaning. A "skilled worker visa" means H-1B in the US, E-7 in South Korea, S Pass in Singapore. Use country-specific referents that carry the same conceptual weight. Word choice constitutes a framing treatment and must be calibrated per country, not just translated -- terms like "unauthorized," "undocumented," and "illegal" carry different connotations across linguistic and political contexts (Stantcheva 2023, citing Merolla et al. 2013). The Cross-Cultural Survey Guidelines (CCSG 2016) are the canonical source for cross-cultural comparability, including translation and adaptation procedures.
25- **Qualitative Treatment Framing:** For information experiments fielded across countries, consider using qualitative descriptions rather than exact statistics. Qualitative information "can help make the treatment more homogeneous when doing an experiment in several countries or settings" because exact numbers carry different meanings in different contexts (Stantcheva 2023).
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,400 words
Files2
LicenceSource-available
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈50
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
8,875
on trigger
The instruction body and 1 supporting file, read only when the skill fires.
4.5%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 45% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

8.9k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

2 files, 35.7 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md18.4 kB
  • reference/example-4-country-immigration.md17.3 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 2 files you can review in full before installing. The Source-available licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Cross-National Comparative Designer · 8.9k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/cross-national-comparative-designer" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer ] || { mv .claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/cross-national-comparative-designer" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add brycewang-stanford/cross-national-comparative-designer

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/cross-national-comparative-designer" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/cross-national-comparative-designer" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/cross-national-comparative-designer/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where. It appears as cross-national-design in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, cross-national-comparative-designer.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencebrycewang-stanford/cross-national-comparative-designer

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

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