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Scientific Hypothesis Generation

Turns observations into evidence-bounded candidate hypotheses, rival explanations, discriminating predictions, and preregistration-ready analysis plans.

EducationAdvanced33,0303,248AI score 9/10Last updated: Aug 9, 2026

What it does

  • Keeps observation, research question, hypothesis, mechanism, estimand, prediction, and evidence strictly separate so nothing gets promoted to "fact" prematurely.
  • Forces generation of rival explanations first: measurement artifact, confounding, selection/attrition, collider conditioning, reverse causation, chance, competing mechanisms.
  • Requires declaring the claim type (descriptive / associational / predictive / causal / mechanistic) and, for causal targets, a fully specified estimand with identification assumptions.
  • Builds a dated evidence boundary (search date, databases, queries, exclusions) so you say "not located within the documented search boundary" instead of "no prior work exists".
  • Ships deterministic, offline CLIs (Python 3.11+ stdlib only) for causal-claim linting, operationalization checks, prediction/rival matrices, evidence-ledger audits, and preregistration scaffolding.

Who it's for

  • Graduate students and researchers drafting papers, theses, or grant proposals.
  • Teams preparing OSF preregistrations, Registered Reports, or clinical/epidemiological protocols.
  • Data analysts who need guardrails against sliding from association to causation.

Examples

  1. "Patients on drug A show lower relapse rates in our cohort" → get a labeled candidate set plus confounding/selection/reverse-causation rivals and tests that discriminate between them.
  2. Lint a manuscript draft with python3 scripts/lint_causal_claims.py draft.md to catch unsupported causal language.
  3. Fill a hypothesis record JSON, then run generate_preregistration_scaffold.py record.json -o preregistration.md to produce a preregistration skeleton.

· · · Install guide · · ·

Try it now, no install

Paste this into Claude to use the skill without installing anything.

Read the instructions in this file and follow them to help me:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills/HEAD/skills/hypothesis-generation/SKILL.md

What I want: (describe your task here)

If Claude can't open the link, open it yourself and paste the contents instead.

If it works for you, download the ZIP below and install it. Then it runs on its own — no pasting each time.

Install in the Claude app (no terminal)
  1. Download the ZIP with the button below.
  2. In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities and turn on 'Code execution and file creation'. (one time)
  3. Go to Customize → Skills → + → 'Upload a skill' and upload the ZIP.
Download ZIP
Install in Claude Code

Let Claude do it — paste this into Claude Code

Install the skill I found on Claude Skill Mart.
Copy the skills/hypothesis-generation folder from the GitHub repo K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills into my ~/.claude/skills/hypothesis-generation/.
When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.

Install with a command instead

git clone https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills.git && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r scientific-agent-skills/skills/hypothesis-generation ~/.claude/skills/

This is a third-party skill. Check the source repository before installing.

  1. Open a terminal.
  2. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills.git
  3. Create the skills directory: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
  4. Copy just this skill: cp -r scientific-agent-skills/skills/hypothesis-generation ~/.claude/skills/
  5. Verify Python: python3 --version (3.11+ required for the bundled CLIs; no extra packages needed).
  6. Restart Claude Code, then prompt something like "Turn this observation into candidate hypotheses and rival explanations" to trigger the skill.