Vibe Researching as Wolf Coming: Can AI Agents with Skills Replace or Augment Social Scientists?

arXiv:2602.22401v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: AI agents — systems that execute multi-step reasoning workflows with persistent state, tool access, and specialist skills — represent a qualitative shift from prior automation technologies in social science. Unlike chatbots that respond to isolated queries, AI agents can now read files, run code, query databases, search the web, and invoke domain-specific skills to execute entire research pipelines autonomously. This paper introduces the concept of vibe researching — the AI-era parallel to vibe coding — and uses scholar-skill, a 26-skill plugin for Claude Code covering the full research pipeline from idea to submission across 18 orchestrated phases with 53 quality gates, as an illustrative case. I develop a cognitive task framework that classifies research activities along two dimensions — codifiability and tacit knowledge requirement — to identify a delegation boundary that is cognitive, not sequential: it cuts through every stage of the research pipeline, not between stages. I argue that AI agents excel at speed, coverage, and methodological scaffolding but struggle with theoretical originality and tacit field knowledge. The paper concludes with an analysis of three implications for the profession — augmentation with fragile conditions, stratification risk, and a pedagogical crisis — and proposes five principles for responsible vibe researching.