# Research Person > Research a person from public sources into a confidence-marked Obsidian People dossier. - Skill: `carlkibler/research-person` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add carlkibler/research-person` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/carlkibler/research-person/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Research & Search - Author: carlkibler (https://skillmd.com/u/carlkibler) - Updated: 2026-09-21 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/carlkibler/research-person --- # Research Person Turn a name into a useful, honest **People dossier** in the vault — the kind of note that makes the next conversation, intro, or working relationship go better. Built for Carl's relationship KB: real friends and colleagues, researched from **public sources only**, for his own private notes. This is the generalized version of a clean OSINT pass: resolve identity → gather public footprint → mark confidence → write it where it belongs without trampling what's already there. ## When to use - "Research and fill out their People note" - "Build a dossier on these folks: " - Refreshing a stale People note before a meeting, intro, or 1:1 - A new colleague/friend you want context on before working together ## When NOT to use - A public figure for a general report → use `deep-research` instead (this skill writes to the *People* KB) - Building a profile of *Carl himself* → use `profile-me` - You only need one fact (current employer) → just search; don't spin up the whole dossier ## Ethics & guardrails (read once, apply always) - **Public sources only.** Things the person has published or that are openly indexed. No paywalled background-check services, no scraping behind logins you'd need to deceive to pass, no pretexting. - **For Carl's private KB**, to support real relationships — not surveillance of strangers. If the named person isn't someone Carl plausibly knows or works with, pause and confirm before researching. - **Contain sensitive material.** Home address, family members, health, finances, religion, politics, legal history — even when public — go in a clearly-fenced `## Sensitive` block, each line marked `⚠️`, never in the orientation blurb or frontmatter. If it isn't relationship-relevant, omit it. - **Identity confidence is a first-class output.** A confidently-written note about the *wrong* person is the main failure mode. Always state how sure you are it's the right individual. --- ## Phase 0 — Disambiguate before researching 1. Take the name plus any **disambiguators** Carl gives: employer, city, role, email, a LinkedIn/GitHub/site URL, "the one who…", mutual company. 2. **Check the vault first.** If a note already exists, that note IS the source of truth for who this is — read it, reuse its identity, and update in place (Phase 4 routing). - Work: `~/cloud/gdrive/obsidian-vault-carlkibler/halo/People/.md` - Personal: `~/cloud/gdrive/obsidian-vault-carlkibler/People/.md` 3. If the name is common (e.g. "Mike Smith") and there are **no disambiguators and no existing note**, ask Carl for one or two before burning a research pass. Guessing wrong is worse than asking. 4. For a batch, run people **in parallel** (one research effort each) but keep their notes separate. ## Phase 1 — Gather the public footprint Cast wide, then verify. Aim to answer: *who they are, what they do, where they've been, what they've made, how Carl knows them, and what's useful for the relationship.* Search/fetch angles (skip what doesn't apply): - **Identity & current role** — employer, title, location. Cross-check 2+ sources before stating as fact. - **Professional history** — past roles, companies, education. LinkedIn, company About pages, bios. - **Builders' trail** — GitHub/GitLab, personal site/blog, Stack Overflow, npm/PyPI, patents. - **Writing & speaking** — talks, papers (Scholar/academia.edu), podcasts, posts, interviews. - **Public social presence** — X/Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram/YouTube *if public and relevant*. - **News & affiliations** — press mentions, boards, orgs, communities, open-source projects. - **Shared context** — mutual employers/companies already in the vault, mutual people, overlapping history. Tooling notes: - Default to `WebSearch` + `WebFetch`. For **JS-heavy or fetch-blocked sources** (LinkedIn, academia.edu, Bandcamp/Spotify, some company sites) drive a real browser (Playwright MCP) and pull `innerText`, `` tags, and JSON-LD — that's where the verifiable structured data lives. - When a thread looks deep or multi-source, you can delegate the heavy searching to the **`deep-research`** workflow and curate its findings into the dossier. This skill owns identity-resolution, confidence, routing, and the write; deep-research is just a fan-out engine. - **Delegation hygiene.** When you fan out research to subagents, instruct each to **return** its findings as its final message — never to write files. Only the main run writes (the raw dump *and* the vault note); a subagent that tries to write is sandbox-blocked and wastes a turn. Give each a crisp identity anchor and the exact structured output shape you want back. - **Dump raw findings as you go** to the research folder (Phase 4) — URLs, quotes, screenshots. The curated note links back to it; never make Carl re-run the search to see your evidence. ## Phase 2 — Mark confidence on every non-obvious claim Per vault convention, tag facts inline: - **VERIFIED** — stated in a credible source you actually read (cite it). - **INFERRED** — reasoned from evidence, not stated outright. - **UNKNOWN** — an open question worth listing (these are valuable; they're the next research). Plus an explicit **identity confidence** line near the top: `Identity match: HIGH | MEDIUM | LOW` with the basis (e.g. "matched via GitHub→personal site→employer; photo + city consistent"). If MEDIUM/LOW, say what would raise it. ## Phase 3 — Compose the dossier Match the existing People-note shape. Two flavors: ### Work colleague (`halo/People/`) — frontmatter ```yaml --- aliases: [Full Name, nicknames, handle] tags: [person, , confidential] companies: [[Company A]], [[Company B]] updated: YYYY-MM-DD --- ``` ### Personal friend (`People/`) — frontmatter (no `confidential`, no work tags) ```yaml --- aliases: [Full Name, nicknames] tags: [person, friend] updated: YYYY-MM-DD --- ``` ### Body (both flavors) ```markdown # Full Name > One-paragraph orientation: who they are, how Carl knows them, the single most useful thing to know. **Identity match:** HIGH — basis in one line. ## Identity & contact - Role / employer / location — **VERIFIED** (source) - Handles: GitHub `x` · site `url` · LinkedIn `url` · X `@x` - Email / phone — only if Carl already has it or it's openly published ## Background - Career history, education, notable work — confidence-marked, sourced. ## Public presence & work - Projects, writing, talks, repos — with links. ## How Carl knows them / shared context - Mutual companies [[Company]] · mutual people [[Person]] · overlapping history. ## Conversation hooks - Genuine, specific things to connect on (interests, recent work, shared people). Not flattery. ## Sensitive (public but handle with care) ← only if any exists - ⚠️ item — why it's fenced. ## Open questions - [ ] Unknown to resolve — **UNKNOWN** ## See also [[Related person]] · [[Company]] ## Sources Distilled from: `` (date). Key public sources: . ``` Keep it honest and skimmable: one idea per line, no padding, no LinkedIn-bio voice. ## Phase 4 — Write it where it belongs (auto-write, but never clobber) **Routing:** - Existing note anywhere in the vault → **update that file in place.** - Else, work/HaloHealth colleague → `halo/People/.md`; personal friend → `People/.md`. - **LOW identity match → do NOT write a vault note.** Keep the research + ruled-out namesakes in the `agent-notes` dump only, and report back asking Carl for **one** disambiguator (city, employer, a profile URL, or "the one who…"). A confident note about the *wrong* person is the exact failure this skill exists to avoid. Promote it to a real People note once confidence reaches MEDIUM+ or Carl confirms the identity. (Exception: if a vault note already exists, leave it and just append the open question.) - Genuinely ambiguous and no signal → ask Carl which. **Raw research dump (always):** - Work → `~/dev/agent-notes/work/people-research//` (this symlinks under `halo/` and syncs). - Personal → `~/dev/agent-notes/me/people-research//`. - Save `findings.md` (URLs + quotes + confidence) and any screenshots/exports there. **Merge rule — preserve existing content:** - Personal notes are often **freeform logs / 1:1 notes**. Do **not** overwrite them. Read the file, then **insert a `## Background (researched )` dossier section** (and the other dossier sections) *above or below* the existing log, leaving every dated entry and human-written line intact. - For an existing structured note, **enhance in place** — update stale facts, add new findings, bump `updated:`, append to Open questions. Never drop Carl's hand-written lines. - Always finish by updating `updated:` / adding a `(researched YYYY-MM-DD)` marker so refreshes are visible. **Cross-link both ways:** link every Company and Person the note touches; redlink `[[Like This]]` for named-but-missing entities (marks a note worth creating). Weave into hubs like [[_People Directory]] when present. ## Phase 5 — Report back Tell Carl, per person: where the note landed (path), **identity confidence**, the 3–5 most useful new things found, anything fenced as sensitive, and the top open questions. For a batch, a one-line-per-person summary table. ## The handoff version If Carl wants to hand this to a friend, a colleague, or a different agent/tool that can't run this skill, give them the standalone copy-paste prompt in [`references/handoff-prompt.md`](references/handoff-prompt.md). It carries the same methodology and guardrails without the vault-write step.