Research Factory

Research Factory — Claude Code Plugin

Claude Code conversion of the Research Paper Factory multi-agent system. One install gives you, in any project and any Claude Code surface (CLI, VS Code extension, Cowork):

• 8 conductor commands — /research-factory:strategist, idea-lab, paper-lab, de-conductor, da-conductor, pw-editor, rev-strategist, presenter, plus /research-factory:init-project
• 23 worker subagents — DE-, DA-, PW-, Rev-, SS-* (delegated to via the Task tool; model tiers: opus for drafting/review, sonnet for compute, haiku for recon)
• 17 skills — backbone-update, memory-charter, critical-review-loop, slurm-submit, stata/python-regression, table-formatting, …
• Guard hooks — block writes to data/raw/, block heavy jobs on cluster login nodes, checkpoint _STATE.md on Stop, snapshot before compaction, restore context on SessionStart

Install (once per machine)

/plugin marketplace add xuxiguo/research-factory-claude
/plugin install research-factory@research-factory-claude

Update later with /plugin marketplace update xuxiguo.

Requirements: python on PATH (hooks and pipeline scripts). For SS-Imager, set OPENAI_API_KEY.

Use

In a fresh project: /research-factory:init-project My Project Name — creates the folder structure, backbone files, and project CLAUDE.md contract. Then start with /research-factory:strategist.

In an existing factory project: just start a conductor command; it reads docs/_backbone/_STATE.md to recover context.

How this maps from the Copilot system

Copilot concept	Claude Code equivalent
@Conductor custom agents	Slash commands (run in main session, interactive stops preserved)
Subagent .agent.md + runSubagent	agents/*.md + Task tool delegation
#skill:name activation	Plugin skills (auto-trigger by description, or /skill-name)
.github/copilot-instructions.md	Per-project CLAUDE.md (written by init-project)
instructions/*.instructions.md (path-scoped)	Folded into the project CLAUDE.md contract
Copilot hooks JSON	hooks/hooks.json (PreToolUse / PostToolUse / Stop / PreCompact / SessionStart)
Workflow-Manager / TeamManager deploy agents	Not needed — git push + /plugin marketplace update
Codex / Gemini model assignments	Mapped to Claude tiers (opus / sonnet / haiku)

Regenerating

This directory is generated from the Copilot-format sources in agents/, skills/, hooks/, templates/:

python scripts/convert_to_claude_plugin.py

Edit the sources (or config/plugin-static/ for this README, init-project.md, and PROJECT_CLAUDE.md), re-run the converter, commit, push.