Auto-Empirical Research Skills Router

Auto-Empirical Research Skills Router

Use this root skill when the full AERS repository has been installed as a single skill folder. Treat it as a router and catalog, not as a request to load every vendored SKILL.md.

The catalog holds 1,096 skills across 76 vendored collections. Never read them all — route to one, then load only that skill's SKILL.md.

Workflow

1. Classify the user's empirical-research task by stage, then load the single best-matching skill:
   • Full pipeline or orchestration: start with skills/69-Paper-WorkFlow/ or the skills/00* flagship analysis skills — skills/00-Full-empirical-analysis-skill_StatsPAI/ (StatsPAI), skills/00.1-Full-empirical-analysis-skill_Python/ (Python), skills/00.2-Full-empirical-analysis-skill_Stata/ (Stata), skills/00.3-Full-empirical-analysis-skill_R/ (R). Note the StatsPAI flagship has no dot in its prefix, so a skills/00.* glob misses it.
   • Causal inference and econometrics: pick by method from the table below, or search catalog/skills.json / docs/TAXONOMY.md.
   • AER or top economics journal work: start with skills/50-brycewang-aer-skills/.
   • Replication, citation, or peer review: use docs/SKILL_CATALOG.md and docs/GOLDEN_WORKFLOWS.md to choose a focused skill.
   • Academic de-AIGC (English or Chinese) or academic rewriting: start with skills/48-de-AIGC-skills/ or nearby writing skills in the catalog.
2. Read only the selected child skill's SKILL.md, then follow its progressive-disclosure instructions for references/, scripts/, assets/, or templates.
3. If no child skill clearly matches, inspect catalog/skills.json first (has path, name, description, line_count, and a globally-unique qualified_name), then docs/SKILL_CATALOG.md. For richer filtering (topic tags, quality_score, license, commercial_use), use catalog/skills-enriched.json. Avoid broad recursive reads of skills/.

   • Both catalog JSON files are large (roughly 1 MB / 20k lines each) — query them instead of reading them whole. Example:

     python3 -c "import json; [print(s['qualified_name'], '->', s['path']) for s in json.load(open('catalog/skills.json'))['skills'] if 'synthetic control' in (s['name'] + ' ' + s['description']).lower()]"
     

     A plain grep -in "synthetic control" catalog/skills.json works too when a rough match is enough.

4. For installation help, use docs/INSTALL.md for Codex-style copy installs and INSTALL.md for Claude Code marketplace/plugin installs.
5. If editing this repository, keep parent and nested repos separate. In particular, inspect git status inside skills/69-Paper-WorkFlow/ (a git submodule) before touching it.

Method → where to start

Match the user's identification strategy or task to a starting collection, then confirm against catalog/skills.json.

This table is a shortcut to the most common starting points, not a complete index — it names fewer than half of the vendored collections, and the rest are reachable only through catalog/skills.json. A task missing from this table is not a task without a skill: fall through to step 3 and search the catalog before concluding nothing matches.