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Search biomedical literature and retrieve records via PubMed E-utilities
Passed 22 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 18 of 22 without it.
and 1 more in the full report
4 fixed18 passed either way0 still failing0 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
One of 4 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
I am querying PubMed for a large literature survey and want to retrieve as many PMIDs as possible in a single search request without paginating. What parameter and maximum integer value should be used in the URL query?
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| The request uses the retmax parameter. | Passed | Passed |
| The retmax value is set to 10000. | Missed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
PubMed is the premier biomedical literature database maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the US National Library of Medicine. It indexes over 36 million citations and abstracts from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. The Entrez Programming Utilities (E-utilities) provide programmatic access to the entire PubMed database and other NCBI databases.
E-utilities consist of a suite of server-side programs that accept URL-based requests and return structured data. These tools are essential for biomedical researchers, systematic reviewers, and developers building health informatics applications. The API supports complex search queries using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms, boolean operators, and field-specific searches.
The API is free and does not require authentication for basic usage. Registering for an NCBI API key raises the rate limit from 3 to 10 requests per second, which is recommended for any automated workflow.
No authentication required for basic usage (3 requests/second). For higher rate limits (10 requests/second), register for a free API key at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/account/ and include it in requests:
&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY
Including tool and email parameters in requests helps NCBI contact you if there are issues with your application.
GET https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi| Param | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| db | string | Yes | Database name (e.g., pubmed, pmc) |
| term | string | Yes | Search query (supports boolean operators and field tags) |
| retmax | integer | No | Maximum number of IDs returned (default: 20, max: 10000) |
| retstart | integer | No | Index of first ID to retrieve (for pagination) |
| retmode | string | No | Response format: xml (default) or json |
| sort | string | No | Sort order: relevance, pub_date, author, journal |
| datetype | string | No | Date type for range filter: pdat, mdat, edat |
| mindate | string | No | Start date (YYYY/MM/DD) |
| maxdate | string | No | End date (YYYY/MM/DD) |
| usehistory | string | No | Set to "y" to store results on server for subsequent retrieval |
test cases passed, vs 18 / 22 without
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