Research

Research Hub

Seed question: Where should I start investigating this?

Central entry point for any research question. Routes to the right skill(s) based on topic and depth needed. Individual skills (youtube-research, DIP, cui-bono) remain direct entry points — this hub adds a router layer for users who have a question but don't know which methodology to apply.

How This Works

1. UNDERSTAND the question (what is being asked, what domain)
2. CLASSIFY using topic-based escalation (see below)
3. ROUTE to the appropriate skill(s)
4. PROPAGATE budget flag if active

Investigation Profile (onboarded once)

Stable preferences live in a persistent profile OUTSIDE the plugin — language space, deliverable format, default budget, saturation threshold. The skill ships profile-less: it assumes no values until the operator supplies them (a committed default would both leak an operator's setup and become everyone's inherited default).

• Locate/read/write via the self-describing store: run python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/research/scripts/config.py" describe and use the interface it emits (do not hard-code commands here — they drift; the script is the source of truth).
• First run (any get profile/* returns NO_ELEMENT): offer onboarding — skippable; a decline is persisted as profile/engagement: never and never re-asked. Ask at most four questions: languages you can/want to search · default deliverable (template report / brief / three sentences) · default budget mode · saturation threshold (defaults to saturation-sweep's stop rule — a wave adding under ~10% new material, or two waves moving no verdict; unset until the operator sets one).
• Every routed investigation reads the profile first and states which profile values it applied.

Routing

Consult reference/topic-based-escalation.md for the full escalation table. Quick decision tree:

• "Is X trustworthy/safe?" → DIP (deep-investigation-protocol)
• "Should I invest in / support X?" → cui-bono + financial-mcp (a dedicated stonk agent to orchestrate these is in design — issue #61)
• "Who benefits from X?" → cui-bono skill (power analysis)
• "Should I take this dev job / is this studio defense-linked?" — or any dev job/employer evaluation → dev-job-defense-ties (runs cui-bono, classifies the buyer against your saved profile)
• "Have we searched enough? / What are we missing?" → saturation-sweep (declared axes, novelty ledger, measured stop)
• "What's happening with X?" (geopolitical/military) → DIP + cui-bono lenses
• "Learn X from YouTube" → youtube-research
• "Analyze this Substack" → substack-research
• "Transcribe this video" → video-transcript-extraction
• "Challenge my findings" → adversarial-critic agent + dialectic-spiral
• Multiple domains → Suggest investigation-orchestrator agent (spawns a multi-agent team for coordinated research)

Which Investigation Deserves the Depth

Depth is a budget; spend it where these are true (any two justify full depth, none justifies a template report):

• Decision-linked: a real decision changes with the answer (the report template's Decision points section would be non-empty).
• Costly if wrong: the wrong conclusion has a price you'd actually pay.
• Uniquely positioned: you can reach evidence others haven't (language, access, source-dossier history).
• Durable: the answer stays relevant beyond the news cycle.

Otherwise: a web search and three sentences is the right answer, and it is sovereign — say what depth was skipped and why (one line, not an apology).

When to Escalate

The escalation table lives in reference/topic-based-escalation.md so ALL skills share it. This hub reads it and applies it. Individual skills also read it directly.

Key escalation triggers:

• Topic shifts from practitioner → safety/trust/power → invoke DIP or cui-bono
• Single-source contrarian claim → invoke dialectic-spiral (full) + iterative-verification
• Cross-domain question → route sequentially (DIP first for trust, then cui-bono for power, cui-bono + financial-mcp if financial dimension — a dedicated stonk agent is in design, issue #61)

Budget Mode

Activation (any of these):

1. Explicit flag: /research --budget or -b
2. Auto-detect: If budget-mode skill was invoked earlier in this session
3. Inherited: If invoked from another skill already in budget mode

When active:

• Route to lighter skills where appropriate
• Cap dialectic rounds at 2
• Note budget limitation when suggesting heavy skills

Note: After context compaction, auto-detection may fail. Re-invoke budget-mode skill or pass --budget explicitly.

Propagation: When invoking other skills, pass budget context: "Invoking youtube-research --budget" or "Invoking DIP --budget"

Report Template

For any investigation producing a written deliverable, COPY assets/report-template.md and fill it — do not re-derive the structure. The template carries the sections that get dropped exactly when inconvenient (per-camp omissions, symmetric cui-bono, errata) and the version protocol that keeps corrections from being orphaned. Sections that genuinely don't apply are kept with "n/a — why", not deleted: the reader must see that the slot was considered.

A template is an asset to copy, never a mandatory rail: when a web search and three sentences is the right answer, that answer is sovereign — say the template was skipped and why.

Close-Out Guards

Before any routed investigation closes, apply two checks (they are cheap and they catch the two most-observed late-stage failures):

• Verified ≠ understood. For each verified load-bearing line, re-read it for meaning as a separate step: what does it imply for the question asked? A sourcing checkmark suppresses semantic re-reading — schedule the second read explicitly. (Principle P2 (verified-is-not-understood).)
• External correction ⇒ global regeneration. If an external objection or correction arrived at any point, regenerate the salience map (what matters, in what order) from scratch rather than patching the corrected point. A tilt that produced one visible error has usually produced invisible ones. (Principle P3 (inherited-salience-is-not-importance).)
• Method matured ⇒ re-apply backward. If the method evolved during the investigation (a new check adopted, a source class re-weighted), re-apply the matured method to conclusions drawn before it existed, before closing (Principle P8 (the-method-matures-backward)). Expect boundaries and interpretations to sharpen rather than facts to flip — that sharpening is the point.

Platform Notes

This skill is pure natural language routing — no platform-specific tools required. In Claude Code, use the Skill tool to invoke routed skills. In other platforms, load the routed skill's content directly.

For heavy skills (DIP, cui-bono), Claude Code users benefit from spawning a background agent. For investment analysis, use cui-bono with the financial-mcp tools directly — a dedicated stonk agent to compose them automatically is in design (issue #61). In other platforms, load cui-bono content directly as system prompt.

Vasana

A vasana is a pattern that persists across unrelated contexts. If during this task you notice such a pattern emerging, it may be worth capturing. This skill works best alongside the vasana skill and vasana hook from the Vasana System plugin.

Modify freely. Keep this section intact.