mj-deving Research
Use this skill to turn a broad question into a source-grounded answer with explicit uncertainty.
Operating Rules
- Use current sources when facts may have changed.
- Prefer primary sources: official docs, standards, papers, filings, source repositories, release notes, and direct data.
- Verify URLs before presenting them.
- Separate sourced facts from inference.
- Do not invent citations, quotes, dates, statistics, or source names.
- Keep scope proportional: use the smallest research pass that can answer the question well.
Mode Selection
- Quick research: 1-3 high-quality sources; use for narrow factual checks or lightweight comparisons.
- Standard research: 4-8 sources; use for recommendations, tradeoff analysis, market scans, or implementation choices.
- Deep investigation: iterative source gathering; use for ambiguous claims, high-stakes decisions, conflicting evidence, or complex landscapes.
- Technical research: prioritize official documentation, changelogs, source code, specs, and reproducible examples.
- Literature research: prioritize papers, preprints, citations, author/institution context, and methodology limits.
Workflow
- Define the exact question, decision, and desired output.
- Identify source classes needed to answer it.
- Gather sources and discard weak or duplicative material.
- Cross-check important claims against independent evidence.
- Capture uncertainty, caveats, and known disagreement.
- Synthesize into a concise answer with links to the sources used.
Source Quality Heuristics
- High confidence: primary source, recent enough for the question, directly supports the claim.
- Medium confidence: reputable secondary source, consistent with primary evidence, but indirect.
- Low confidence: unsourced summary, unclear provenance, marketing copy, social post, or stale page.
Output Pattern
For most research tasks, return:
- Answer: direct response or recommendation.
- Evidence: key source-backed findings.
- Tradeoffs: what changes the answer.
- Uncertainty: unresolved questions or weak evidence.
- Sources: links used, grouped by relevance.
For decisions, end with concrete next steps.