Study Strategy Selector & Guide Agent Skill

Select evidence-based study strategies matched to material type, learning goal, and student habits.

Context cost
5.3k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 21.2 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Select evidence-based study strategies matched to material type, learning goal, and student habits. Use when advising students on revision techniques, homework, or independent study approaches.

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.

documentationlearning-strategiesmetacognitionrevisionself-regulationstudy-skills

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.md21.2 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: study-strategy-selector disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "self-regulated-learning/study-strategy-selector" skill_name: "Study Strategy Selector & Guide" domain: "self-regulated-learning" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Dunlosky et al. (2013) — Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology" - "Roediger & Pyc (2012) — Inexpensive techniques to improve education: applying cognitive psychology to enhance educational practice" - "Kornell & Bjork (2007) — The promise and perils of self-regulated study" - "Hartwig & Dunlosky (2012) — Study strategies of college students: are self-testing and scheduling related to achievement?" - "Miyatsu et al. (2018) — Five popular study strategies: their pitfalls and optimal implementations" input_schema: required: - field: "learning_task" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" - field: "material_type" type: "string" optional: - field: "time_available" type: "string" - field: "assessment_type" type: "string" - field: "student_profiles" type: "array" - field: "subject_area" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "recommended_strategies" type: "array" - field: "strategies_to_avoid" type: "array" - field: "study_plan" type: "string" - field: "student_guide" type: "string" chains_well_with: - "retrieval-practice-generator" - "spaced-practice-scheduler" - "metacognitive-prompt-library" - "goal-setting-protocol-designer" teacher_time: "3 minutes" tags: ["study-skills", "learning-strategies", "revision", "self-regulation", "metacognition"] ---
70# Study Strategy Selector & Guide
71
72## What This Skill Does
73
74Analyses a specific learning task and recommends the most evidence-supported study strategies, with an explicit implementation guide for each. Crucially, the skill also identifies ineffective strategies the student is likely using (highlighting, re-reading, copying notes) and provides specific replacement strategies with the evidence rationale. AI is specifically valuable here because students overwhelmingly default to the least effective study strategies — Kornell & Bjork (2007) found that the most popular strategies (re-reading, highlighting) are rated "low utility" by research, while the most effective strategies (retrieval practice, distributed practice) are the least used. This skill encodes Dunlosky et al.'s (2013) landmark review into actionable, task-specific guidance.
75
76## Evidence Foundation
77
78Dunlosky et al. (2013) conducted the most comprehensive review of study strategies ever published, systematically evaluating ten techniques against four criteria (generalisability across learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks). Only two strategies received a "high utility" rating: practice testing (retrieval practice) and distributed practice (spacing). Three received "moderate utility": interleaved practice, elaborative interrogation, and self-explanation. Five were rated "low utility" despite being the most popular among students: highlighting, re-reading, summarisation, keyword mnemonic, and imagery for text. Kornell & Bjork (2007) demonstrated that students are poor judges of their own learning — they choose strategies that feel effective (re-reading produces fluency, which feels like learning) over strategies that are effective (retrieval practice feels harder but produces better retention). Hartwig & Dunlosky (2012) found that students who self-tested and used spacing achieved significantly higher grades. Miyatsu et al. (2018) identified that even "good" strategies have pitfalls — retrieval practice fails if students don't check their answers, and spacing fails if the gaps are too large.
79
80## Input Schema
81
82The teacher must provide:
83- **Learning task:** What the student needs to study. *e.g. "Prepare for a Year 10 Biology exam on cells and transport (70% factual recall, 30% application questions)" / "Revise for GCSE History Paper 2: causes and events of the Cold War"*
84- **Student level:** Year group and current habits. *e.g. "Year 10, currently re-reads notes and highlights" / "Year 12, uses flashcards but no spacing"*
85- **Material type:** Factual, conceptual, procedural, or mixed. *e.g. "Mixed — key terms to memorise plus processes to understand and apply"*
86
87Optional (injected by context engine if available):
88- **Time available:** Study time available before the assessment
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md3,041 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
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.

≈740
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
4,560
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.6%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 27% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

5.3k 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

1 file, 21.2 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md21.2 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

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

# Study Strategy Selector & Guide · 5.3k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/study-strategy-selector-guide/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/study-strategy-selector-guide" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/study-strategy-selector-guide ] || { mv .claude/skills/study-strategy-selector-guide "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/study-strategy-selector-guide" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/study-strategy-selector-guide"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/study-strategy-selector-guide

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

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
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/study-strategy-selector-guide

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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