Research

Research to Markdown

Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.

This skill is imported from mattpocock/skills (MIT) and is model-invoked upstream.

When to use this skill

• Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo.
• Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.

Instructions

Spin up a background agent to do the research, so you keep working while it reads.

Its job:

1. Investigate the question against primary sources (official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs), not a secondary write-up of them. Follow every claim back to the source that owns it.
2. Write the findings to a single Markdown file, citing each claim's source.
3. Save it where the repo already keeps such notes; match the existing convention, and if there is none, put it somewhere sensible and say where.

Examples

• Apply this skill to one narrow scope first, confirm the output matches the shape described above, then widen to the full task.
• When a step needs a fact from the repository or the environment, look it up instead of asking the user for it.

Best practices

• Keep the upstream procedure intact; record deviations explicitly instead of silently improvising.
• Stop and hand control back to the user at every decision point this skill marks as theirs.
• Prefer small reversible changes, and state assumptions rather than burying them.

References

• Upstream skill: mattpocock/skills skills/engineering/research/SKILL.md (commit 3cca18b, MIT)
• Project standards: .agent-skills/skill-standardization/SKILL.md
• Validator script: .agent-skills/skill-standardization/scripts/validate_skill.sh