bio-research

Anthropic umbrella plugin bundling literature search, single-cell QC, sequencing-pipeline orchestration, drug-discovery lookups, and research-strategy skills behind a single /bio-research:start command.

   
Type Claude Code Plugin
Supplier Anthropic
Availability GA — open-sourced in anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins; also surfaced inside Claude Cowork
Pricing Free / OSS — plugin itself is Apache 2.0; individual bundled connectors carry their own pricing (Benchling requires institutional access, BioRender Premium gates the full library, …)
Capabilities Read/Write — end-to-end preclinical R&D in a single install

How to install

  • Claude Code — plugin marketplace: 
    /plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
/plugin install bio-research@knowledge-work-plugins

    Then run /bio-research:start to enumerate the bundled tools. (Upstream README still shows the bare /start, but plugin skills must be invoked with the plugin:skill namespace.)

  • Claude.ai (Cowork) — surfaces the same plugin contents via the Cowork plugin browser.

What it does

Five analysis skills (Literature Review, Single-Cell Analysis, Sequencing Pipeline, Drug Discovery, Research Strategy) plus ~10 MCP connectors named in the plugin docs: PubMed, BioRender, bioRxiv, ClinicalTrials.gov, ChEMBL, Synapse, Wiley Scholar Gateway, Owkin, Open Targets, Benchling.

Primary use cases: End-to-end preclinical R&D in a single install — literature triage, scRNA-seq QC and integration, nf-core pipelines, target prioritisation, clinical-trial review, project-strategy framing.

Notes

Each bundled connector authenticates independently (PubMed needs no auth; Benchling requires an institutional API token; BioRender / Wiley / Synapse use OAuth; Owkin / Open Targets / ChEMBL / bioRxiv / ClinicalTrials are read-only). A known issue (anthropics/claude-code#40106, March 2026) reports plugin-bundled MCP tools returning “Session not found” in Claude Code while working in Cowork — verify before relying on it for production workflows.

Sources

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