andrehuang/research-companion

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# Research Companion

**Strategic research thinking agents for [Claude Code](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code)** — idea evaluation, project triage, and structured brainstorming to help you do research that matters.

This repository now also includes native [Codex](https://openai.com/codex/) support.

Most AI writing tools help you *write* papers. This plugin helps you decide *which* papers to write.

Inspired by Nicholas Carlini's essay ["How to Win a Best Paper Award"](https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2026/how-to-win-a-best-paper-award.html) — which argues that great research starts with taste, strategic problem selection, honest self-evaluation, and knowing when to kill your darlings.

> **📢 Update (April 2026): Research Companion is now also a component of [`researcher-pack`](https://github.com/andrehuang/researcher-pack)** — a more advanced, all-in-one Claude Code plugin for researchers that bundles strategic brainstorming, paper reading, literature tracking, academic writing, and project management into a single integrated workflow. This standalone repo is still actively maintained, and any updates to Research Companion will be synced between both repos — so you can use it here on its own, or get the full toolkit over at [`researcher-pack`](https://github.com/andrehuang/researcher-pack). Feedback, issues, and PRs are very welcome in either place! 🙏

## The Problem

Researchers don't lack the ability to write papers. They lack a trusted colleague who will:

- Tell them an idea isn't worth 6 months of their life — *before* they invest those months
- Ask "who else is working on this and what's your unfair advantage?"
- Challenge them to state the key insight in one sentence (and refuse to move on until they can)
- Help them find the unexpected cross-field connection that makes a contribution truly novel

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