Skills

Search a billion+ documents — papers, books, code, legal cases, forums, Wikipedia, and more.

Security Scan

The skill is an instruction-only wrapper for the external Jail Search API (api.jail.li); its requests, required binary (curl), and optional API key are consistent with the stated purpose.

Purpose & Capability

The description (searching many document types) aligns with the provided instructions to call api.jail.li and the declared dependency on curl. The optional JAIL_API_KEY is appropriate for an external search API. (Minor note: registry metadata lists the skill name as "Skills" while the SKILL.md name is "jail-search" — probably a metadata mismatch but not a functional mismatch.)

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md only instructs the agent to call the Jail MCP endpoints or the REST endpoints at api.jail.li and to use the optional API key for higher limits. It does not instruct reading local files, other env vars, or contacting other endpoints. Be aware that user queries and any included content will be transmitted to the external api.jail.li service.

Install Mechanism

Instruction-only skill with no install spec and no code files — lowest installation risk. It only requires curl to be present (declared).

Credentials

No required environment variables; JAIL_API_KEY is listed as optional in the metadata and used only to increase rate limits. No unrelated credentials or config paths are requested.

Persistence & Privilege

always:false and normal autonomous invocation settings. The skill does not request persistent or elevated privileges and does not instruct modifying other skills or system-wide configs.

Assessment

This skill simply delegates searches to the external service at api.jail.li. Before installing, consider: (1) any query text you send will go to that external service—avoid sending sensitive secrets or private data; (2) if you provide an API key, it grants that service usage and potentially billing—verify key scope and trust the provider; (3) the registry metadata name differs from the SKILL.md name (minor mismatch) and the source is listed as unknown — if you need higher assurance, verify the skill publisher and the jail.li privacy/terms pages before use.

JAIL Search

Search a billion+ documents — papers, books, code, legal cases, forums, Wikipedia, and more. Returns titles, authors, URLs, and short descriptions — for discovering sources and links, not retrieving full content. After finding relevant results, use their URLs with fetch or browsing tools to read the actual documents.

When to Use

• User asks to research a topic, find papers, books, or articles
• User wants to look up facts, people, places, or concepts
• User asks about community discussions or forum threads
• User wants to find legal cases or legislation
• User needs to find music, movies, packages, or other metadata
• User asks "search for...", "find...", or "look up..."

Via MCP (preferred if jail MCP server is configured)

Use mcp_jail_search(query, type) and mcp_jail_detail(doc_id).

Setup (if not already configured)

Connect to the hosted MCP server:

claude mcp add --transport http jail https://api.jail.li/mcp

With API key for higher rate limits:

claude mcp add --transport http jail "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_your_key_from_jail_li"

For other clients, add to MCP config: "url": "https://api.jail.li/mcp?jailApiKey=sk_live_..."

Get a key at jail.li.

Via curl (fallback)

Search

curl -Gs "https://api.jail.li/v1/search" --data-urlencode "q=QUERY" -d "type=TYPE&limit=10"

With API key: add -H "Authorization: Bearer $JAIL_API_KEY" or use ?jailApiKey=sk_live_...

Replace QUERY and TYPE (required, see below).

Paginate: add &cursor=CURSOR using next_cursor from previous response.

Detail

curl -s "https://api.jail.li/v1/detail/DOC_ID"

Types

Start with: academic, wiki, books, legal, forums. The rest just exist if you need.

Type	Content
academic	OpenAlex, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, DBLP
wiki	Wikipedia (18 languages)
books	Books, digital libraries, and classical literature
legal	Harvard Case Law, CourtListener, EUR-Lex, UK Legislation
forums	Hacker News, StackExchange, Lobsters, LessWrong, and 60+ more
economics	World Bank, IMF, FRED, ECB, BLS, Tax Foundation
packages	npm, PyPI, Crates.io, Libraries.io
knowledge	Wikidata, structured knowledge, and facts
news	News articles and journalism
music	Discogs, MusicBrainz
video	IMDb, YouTube
health	Clinical trials and food safety data
geo	World place names and geographic data
fandom	Fan wiki articles and community knowledge bases
tech	Dev.to, product community forums
audio	Podcasts and audio content
social	Mastodon, Lemmy, fediverse
crypto	DeFi protocols, token data, and on-chain analytics
predictions	Prediction markets and forecasting

Strategy

1. Pick the right type first — this determines which indices are searched
2. Use 2-4 keywords (English preferred unless searching non-English content)
3. Try different keywords and synonyms if first attempt returns few results
4. Search the same topic across multiple types for cross-referencing
5. Use next_cursor to paginate for more results
6. Use detail endpoint for full metadata on promising results

Response fields

Each result: title, author, year, type, description (200 char), id, url, score.

Get an API key at https://jail.li for higher limits.