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Usage ModesClient Usage

Client Usage Modes

AI Research Skills can be used in several ways depending on your needs. Choose the approach that fits your workflow.

Mode A: Skills Only (No Code)

Best for: Researchers, students, practitioners who want to learn concrete research workflows.

Option 1: Browse the Docs Site

Visit the Skills page to search, filter, and read skills with nice formatting.

Search options:

  • Native docs search (top search box, powered by Pagefind)
  • Skills page keyword filter (always available)
  • Semantic search (optional / backup)

Semantic search is disabled by default (to keep deployments and costs simple). To enable it, set:

  • NEXT_PUBLIC_AIRS_ENABLE_SEMANTIC=1

When enabled, semantic search can use:

  • Cloudflare Pages Function: /api/semantic-search (recommended for consistent results)
  • Browser fallback: runs locally in your browser (downloads a small model on first use)

To reduce spam (and protect the daily free quota), the Cloudflare semantic endpoint can require Turnstile. When enabled, the Skills page will show a small human verification widget before semantic search requests are accepted.

Option 2: Read Raw Files

Open skills/<category>/<skill-name>/SKILL.md directly in any text editor or on GitHub.

skills/
├── research/
│   └── reference-formatting/SKILL.md
└── analysis/
    └── textual-analysis-basic/SKILL.md

Option 3: Copy/Paste into AI

Copy the skill content and paste it into your AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) for guidance while working.

Mode B: Validator (Contributors & CI)

Best for: Contributors adding new skills, maintainers running CI checks.

Local Validation

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/boan-anbo/ai-research-skills.git
cd ai-research-skills
 
# Validate your changes
npm install
npm run validate:strict

Mode C: MCP Server (AI Integration)

Best for: Power users who want AI assistants to have structured access to skills and research tools.

What You Get

  • Programmatic skill discovery (skills.list, skills.get)
  • Semantic search across skills
  • Tool capabilities (PDF extraction, text analysis)

Setup

  1. Install dependencies:
npm install
  1. Configure your MCP client:

Claude Code / Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airs": {
      "command": "/path/to/ai-research-skills/node_modules/.bin/tsx",
      "args": ["/path/to/ai-research-skills/mcp/airs-mcp.ts", "--skills-dir", "/path/to/ai-research-skills/skills"]
    }
  }
}

Generic MCP Client:

{
  "name": "airs",
  "command": "tsx",
  "args": ["mcp/airs-mcp.ts", "--skills-dir", "./skills"],
  "transport": "stdio"
}
  1. Your AI assistant can now call AI Research Skills tools directly.

Comparison Table

ModeSetupUse CaseRequires
A: Skills OnlyNoneReading/learningBrowser or text editor
B: ValidatorNode.jsContributingnpm run validate:strict
C: MCP ServerNode.js + MCP clientAI integrationMCP-compatible client

Which Should I Use?

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Do you just want to read skills?        │
│                                         │
│   YES → Mode A (Skills Only)            │
│   NO  ↓                                 │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Are you contributing new skills?        │
│                                         │
│   YES → Mode B (Validator)              │
│   NO  ↓                                 │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Do you want AI to call DH tools?        │
│                                         │
│   YES → Mode C (MCP Server)             │
│   NO  → Mode A is enough                │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
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