Research Assistant

What This Skill Does

The Research Assistant by johstracke is a robust knowledge management tool designed specifically for autonomous agents. It acts as a persistent memory layer, allowing an agent to structure, store, retrieve, and export research notes across various topics and project sessions. By centralizing information in a JSON-backed database (research_db.json), the skill ensures that information gathered during deep research tasks is not lost once a session terminates. It supports categorical tagging, global search, and clean markdown exports, making it an essential component for complex, multi-stage workflows.

Installation

To integrate the Research Assistant into your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/johstracke/research-assistant Ensure that you have write permissions in your home directory or ~/.openclaw/workspace/ folder, as the skill performs local file I/O operations to maintain the research database and generate export files.

Use Cases

• Long-term Project Tracking: Keep track of multi-step experiments or long-running development goals by logging findings as they occur.
• Content Curation: Organize article outlines, resource links, and reference materials for automated content creation workflows.
• Knowledge Synthesis: Search across disparate research topics to find connections or patterns that might otherwise be forgotten between agent sessions.
• Archival/Reporting: Generate clean markdown reports of specific research topics to share with human stakeholders or move into documentation systems like Obsidian or Notion.

Example Prompts

1. "I am researching autonomous agents. Add a note to the 'agent-market' topic: 'ClawHub offers a decentralized marketplace for skill sharing' with tags 'market' and 'resource'."
2. "Search for all notes containing the term 'automation' and summarize the key findings for me."
3. "Export all notes related to the 'q3-planning' topic into a file named 'q3_report.md' in my workspace directory."

Tips & Limitations

• Security First: The skill includes built-in path validation. Always aim to export files to the workspace or /tmp directories to ensure seamless operation.
• Tag Strategy: Use consistent tags to maximize the effectiveness of your searches. For example, use 'todo' for pending tasks and 'done' for completed ones.
• Cleanup: While there is no explicit 'delete' command in the quick start, you can manually prune the research_db.json file if necessary, as it is a standard JSON format.
• Limitations: The skill is designed for text-based research. It does not natively handle binary file attachments or complex media formats, so focus on text-based note-taking and markdown formatting for best results.