history-research-guide
Historical research from primary sources to scholarly analysis
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill history-research-guide --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# History Research Guide ## Overview Historical research transforms raw evidence from the past -- documents, artifacts, images, oral testimonies -- into interpretive accounts that explain how and why things happened. The discipline demands a distinctive set of skills: source criticism, archival navigation, contextual reasoning, and the ability to construct arguments that are both evidence-based and theoretically informed. The digital turn has expanded the historian's toolkit dramatically. Digitized archives, text mining, GIS mapping, and network analysis now complement traditional close reading. But the fundamentals remain unchanged: rigorous engagement with primary sources, awareness of historiographical debates, and transparent argumentation. This guide covers the full research workflow for historians: finding and evaluating primary sources, navigating archives (physical and digital), applying source criticism, structuring historical arguments, and leveraging digital tools for analysis. It serves researchers at all levels, from graduate students designing their first archival project to established scholars integrating computational methods. ## Source Criticism: The Foundation ##
- Overview
- Source Criticism: The Foundation
- External Criticism (Authenticity)
- Internal Criticism (Reliability and Meaning)
- Archival Research
- Preparing for the Archive
- Major Digital Archives
- Historiographical Frameworks
- Schools of Historical Thought
- Braudel's Three Temporalities
- Digital Methods for Historians
- Text Mining Historical Sources
- GIS for Historical Analysis
- Writing Historical Research
What does the history-research-guide skill do?
Historical research from primary sources to scholarly analysis
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill history-research-guide --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, a repository with 3,244 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.