# Interview Me

> Interactive interview to formalize a research idea into a structured specification with hypotheses and empirical strategy.

- Skill: `brycewang-stanford/interview-me-2` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add brycewang-stanford/interview-me-2`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/brycewang-stanford/interview-me-2/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Research & Search
- Author: brycewang-stanford (https://skillmd.com/u/brycewang-stanford)
- Updated: 2026-09-09
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/brycewang-stanford/interview-me-2

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## Research Interview

Conduct a structured interview through 6 phases to formalize a research idea.

### Interview Phases

1. **The Big Picture** -- What phenomenon or puzzle are you investigating? Why does it matter?
2. **Theoretical Motivation** -- What's your intuition for the mechanism? What does theory predict?
3. **Data and Setting** -- What data do you have? What specific context or time period?
4. **Identification** -- Any natural experiments or policy changes? What are the threats to causality?
5. **Expected Results** -- What do you predict? What are the implications for policy or theory?
6. **Contribution** -- How does this differ from existing work? What's the value-added?

### Protocol

- Ask questions **one at a time** (no multi-question dumps)
- Probe deeper based on answers -- follow up on weak spots
- Be curious, not prescriptive
- Know when to stop (after 5-8 meaningful exchanges)

### Output

After the interview, produce a **Research Specification Document**:

```markdown
# Research Specification: [Topic]

## Research Question
[Clear, specific, answerable]

## Motivation
[Why this matters -- policy relevance, theoretical gap, empirical puzzle]

## Hypothesis
[Testable prediction with expected sign/magnitude]

## Empirical Strategy
- **Method:** [DiD, IV, RDD, etc.]
- **Treatment/Variation:** [What provides identification]
- **Control group:** [Comparison group]
- **Identifying assumption:** [What must hold]
- **Robustness checks:** [Planned sensitivity analyses]

## Data
[Sources, sample, key variables, time period]

## Expected Results
[What you expect to find and why]

## Contribution
[How this advances the literature]

## Open Questions
[What remains uncertain]
```

Save to `quality_reports/research_spec_[sanitized_topic].md`.