Analytical Grounding

SkillDev tools

Retrieve canonical pathway members, cell-type marker records, and genomic interval feature overlaps from declared analytical sources.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the Analytical Grounding skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by exon-research/genomi in skills/analytical-grounding/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Use this skill for source-declared records that ground an analytical statement, without asking Genomi to choose the interpretation.

Use When

  • The input is a controlled pathway or gene-set name/id and the agent needs its canonical member genes.
  • The input is a controlled cell type and the agent needs marker-gene records.
  • The input is a genomic interval and the agent needs overlaps against declared GENCODE or ENCODE annotation files.

Operations

  • pathway.retrieve_members: retrieve Reactome, KEGG human pathway, or supplied or installed MSigDB Hallmark GMT member genes. Use a source for free-text pathway names unless the identifier prefix makes the source clear.
  • cell_type.retrieve_markers: retrieve HPA single-cell marker records, installed CellMarker/PanglaoDB tables, or supplied marker tables.
  • region.retrieve_features: retrieve interval overlaps from supplied or installed GENCODE GTF and/or ENCODE cCRE BED files for GRCh37/GRCh38. Supply assembly; without it the tool reports unsupported assembly instead of guessing a genome build.

Boundaries

  • These are retrieval verbs over declared source coverage.
  • Do not use them as experimental protocol recommendations, workflow templates, or free-text biological interpretation.
  • Treat coverage_status literally:
    • data_returned: declared source records were returned.
    • in_scope_empty: the input was in declared scope, and no records matched.
    • out_of_scope_for_input: the source, assembly, identifier, or required source file is outside declared coverage.
  • Preserve source priors. A pathway member, marker gene, interval overlap, or druggable-target membership row is evidence context, not a selected answer.

Examples

  • pathway.retrieve_members with {"pathway_id_or_name":"R-HSA-70635"}
  • pathway.retrieve_members with {"pathway_id_or_name":"hsa00010"}
  • cell_type.retrieve_markers with {"cell_type_id_or_name":"hepatocytes","source":"hpa"}
  • cell_type.retrieve_markers with {"cell_type_id_or_name":"Hepatocyte","source":"cellmarker"}
  • region.retrieve_features with {"region":"1:1000-1250","assembly":"GRCh38"}

The installer can cache gencode-grch38, gencode-grch37, encode-ccre-grch38, panglaodb-markers, and cellmarker-human under GENOMI_HOME. MSigDB Hallmark requires a user-supplied official GMT export.

Cross-Capability Synthesis

A scope-limited result from this capability is not a final user-facing answer when other Genomi capabilities can contribute orthogonal evidence to the same question. Returning "cannot answer" while applicable capabilities remain unexamined is a host-agent failure mode.

Tools

cell_type.retrieve_markers

Retrieve canonical marker genes for a controlled cell-type source entity.

Use when: Returns source-declared marker genes for HPA single-cell records or supplied CellMarker, PanglaoDB, or ENCODE marker tables.

Why necessary: Cell-type identity questions need marker records, not disease genetics or GWAS evidence.

Result semantics: Returns marker records only; it does not annotate clusters, assign cell identities, rank cell types, or interpret cell states. Free-text cluster IDs and hypothetical cell-state labels are out of scope.

pathway.retrieve_members

Retrieve canonical member genes for a controlled pathway or gene-set source entity.

Use when: Returns source-declared member genes for Reactome pathways, KEGG human pathways, or supplied MSigDB Hallmark GMT gene sets.

Why necessary: Pathway membership is a grounding fact and should be retrieved separately from disease or variant claims.

Result semantics: Returns pathway membership records only; it does not infer pathway activity, choose genes, or summarize pathway biology. Free-text pathway names should include source unless the identifier prefix implies a declared source.

region.retrieve_features

Retrieve genomic-region feature annotations from supplied or installed GENCODE and ENCODE annotation files.

Use when: The user or an upstream tool supplies a genomic interval and the agent needs transcript or regulatory-feature overlaps for an explicit GRCh37 or GRCh38 assembly.

Why necessary: Genomic coordinates need gene and regulatory feature context before they can be biologically discussed.

Result semantics: Returns source-declared interval overlaps for the assembly shown in query. Empty results mean no overlap in declared files, not biological absence outside declared coverage.

Signals

GitHub stars
482
Forks
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Last commit
Aug 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
analytical-grounding
Source
github.com/exon-research/genomi