Scientific Narrative Builder Agent Skill

Draft scientific introductions: argument logic, framing, multi-experiment coherence.

Context cost
5.5k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
2 files · 22.2 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

Draft scientific introductions: argument logic, framing, multi-experiment coherence.

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.

documentation

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.md15.8 kB · preview
--- name: narrative-building argument-hint: "[describe your paper topic or introduction challenge]" ---
7# Scientific Narrative Builder
8
9**Related skills.** This skill composes with hypothesis-building (where the "Why" funnel lands as a falsifiable "If-Then" with a named estimand), methods-reporting (where the design the narrative promises gets documented to APSA/JARS/DA-RT standards), and pre-registration-writing (where the narrative locks in before data collection).
10
11## Workflow
12
13Author or audit an introduction by walking these five steps in order. Each step has a specific output; do not proceed until the prior step's output exists in the draft. See reference/example-funnel.md for a worked example.
14
15### Step 1 — Why: establish the substantive motivation
16Output: one or two paragraphs naming the real-world social/political tension the study addresses, the specific "invisible" the design will reveal, and the analytical joint where existing theory is silent or conflicted. Do not frame the motivation as a gap-in-literature; frame it as a stake in the world.
17
18- **Identify the "Invisible":** Treat surveys and experiments not just as data collection, but as a process to uncover "invisible factors", specifically perceptions, knowledge, beliefs, and reasoning that administrative data cannot capture.
19- **Carve the Analytical Joints:** Do not settle for a broad topic. Identify the specific analytical joint or tension where existing theory is silent or conflicted -- "creativity in design is grounded in a capacity to carve a problem at its analytical joints" (Sniderman 2018). The introduction must articulate the specific "why" of the phenomenon before proposing the "how" of the experiment.
20- **The ASK Framework:** Druckman (2022) identifies three pathways to research questions: *Assessing* (observing the world and noticing puzzles), *Socializing* (conversations with colleagues, students, and practitioners), and *Kaput* (learning from failed experiments -- "the first thing one should do when an experiment fails is to ask why it failed"). The narrative should be able to trace the question's origin to one of these pathways.
21- **Resist the "Methods-Driven" Temptation:** Ensure the research question dictates the method, not vice versa. Explicitly defend why an experiment is the necessary tool for this specific question. "It is crucial to not jump to designs for their novelty, but only to turn to them when they offer an advantage over what could otherwise have been done" (Druckman 2022). Note that "writing your survey questions is already part of the analysis stage" (Stantcheva 2023) -- question design choices are analytical decisions, not logistical ones, and the narrative should convey this.
22- **Contextualization:** Situate the study within a "broader account of politics" or social life. The narrative must move from the general social importance to the specific theoretical gap. For policy-relevant studies, explicitly connect the research question to the target policy environment and the populations affected.
23- **Multi-Level Theoretical Framing:** When a study includes experiments at different levels of analysis (e.g., individual-level and institutional-level), the introduction must establish the theoretical bridge between levels. State explicitly how reasoning at the micro level (e.g., fairness judgments about individual immigrants) connects to reasoning at the macro level (e.g., legitimacy judgments about governance decisions). The bridge should be conceptual, not just methodological -- explain *why* the same theoretical mechanism should operate at both levels.
24
25### Step 2 — Evidence audit: what the literature actually establishes (and where it fails)
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,289 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.
5,500
on trigger
The instruction body and 1 supporting file, read only when the skill fires.
2.8%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 28% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

5.5k 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, 22.2 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md15.8 kB
  • reference/example-funnel.md6.4 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.

# Scientific Narrative Builder · 5.5k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/scientific-narrative-builder/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/scientific-narrative-builder" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/scientific-narrative-builder ] || { mv .claude/skills/scientific-narrative-builder "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/scientific-narrative-builder" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/scientific-narrative-builder"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add brycewang-stanford/scientific-narrative-builder

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/scientific-narrative-builder/ 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/scientific-narrative-builder/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/scientific-narrative-builder" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/scientific-narrative-builder ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/scientific-narrative-builder "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/scientific-narrative-builder" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/scientific-narrative-builder" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/scientific-narrative-builder/ 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 narrative-building in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, scientific-narrative-builder.

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/scientific-narrative-builder

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

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

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