# Research General

> Research a non-technical topic online (science, history, news, policy, regional/regulatory, consumer purchases, personal decisions, fact-check). The default for research in non-code repos (e.g. a notes vault). For technical/developer topics — libraries, errors, tooling, and even choosing/evaluating dev tools or products — use `research-tech`.

- Skill: `nielsmadan/research-general` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add nielsmadan/research-general`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/nielsmadan/research-general/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Research & Search
- Author: nielsmadan (https://skillmd.com/u/nielsmadan)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/nielsmadan/research-general

---


<!-- Generated from https://github.com/nielsmadan/agentic-coding — edits here are overwritten. -->

# Research General

Research a general (non-programming) topic from multiple angles using parallel sub-agents, with critical evaluation of source credibility.

## Usage

```
research-general <question or topic>
research-general "<exact claim to verify>"
research-general what does the evidence say about screen time and adolescent sleep
research-general causes of the 2008 financial crisis
research-general nuclear vs solar economics for grid power
```

## Gotchas
- "Recent" doesn't mean "correct". For historical, philosophical, or settled empirical topics, a 30-year-old peer-reviewed paper can outweigh a recent op-ed. Weigh authority and topic-stability before recency.
- Wikipedia is **grounding, not authority** — follow its citations to primary sources before stating something as fact.
- Advocacy organizations and think tanks have a stance. Cite them as evidence of *what that side says*, not as neutral fact.
- **Affiliate-driven and SEO listicle sites** ("Top 10 Best X", coupon-hosting comparison sites) are biased toward whatever pays them. Weight independent test institutions and regulators above them.
- Quick mode may miss nuance. If a "simple" question turns out contested ("Is X healthy?" — depends on dose, population, endpoint), note it and suggest re-running in Standard.

## Workflow

### Step 1: Check Existing Knowledge

Before spawning any agents, assess whether you can already answer well from training data:

- **High confidence** (well-established facts, stable domain): answer directly, note you didn't search, offer to research if the user wants verification.
- **Medium confidence** (good answer but maybe outdated, regionally wrong, or incomplete): proceed in **Quick mode** to verify and supplement.
- **Low confidence** (unfamiliar, rapidly changing, contested, or regulatory/regional specifics): proceed in **Standard mode**.

When in doubt, lean toward searching — but only if searching can plausibly improve the answer.

### Step 2: Parse Input

Extract: **topic**, **sub-questions / claims**, **date scope**, **comparison targets**, **region/locale** (drives which sources are authoritative), **personal context** (career stage, budget for consumer queries), and **topic stability** (current / active research / established / historical — drives the recency rubric).

### Step 3: Classify Query Depth

| Mode | When | Behavior |
|------|------|----------|
| **Quick** | Well-known fact, one-shot lookup, or verifying medium-confidence existing knowledge | Encyclopedic + General only. Skip follow-up loop and critique. |
| **Standard** | Empirical, contested, comparisons, fact-checking, regional/regulatory, consumer research | Full workflow including follow-up loop and adversarial critique. |

When in doubt, use Standard. **Stop at diminishing returns** — if three agents return the same finding, broaden don't deepen.

### Step 4: Spawn Agents in Parallel

Pick the relevant agents from the table below and launch each batch together as runtime capacity allows. Each agent captures source metadata: URL, date, source type, author/publisher, and (where it applies) sample/methodology, primary-vs-secondary, and **affiliate or sponsorship disclosure**.

**Dispatch research workers with read/search/fetch tools and no file edits.** Disable delegation tools for ordinary workers where supported; read-only access alone does not prevent delegation, and available tools vary by harness. If a branch needs a coordinator, its brief must name the subtasks, bound all descendants, and define when to stop. Include those descendants in the main agent's allocation.

**One focused assignment per worker.** Give it a concrete question and a stopping condition. Coordinators receive an explicit decomposition; workers do the assigned research themselves.

**The table is a menu.** Pick the smallest useful set of complementary perspectives. Briefly state a larger decomposition, including any nesting, and queue work within the runtime concurrency limit. Additional agents do not require approval solely because of their count.

| Agent | Spawn when | Search strategy |
|-------|------------|-----------------|
| **Encyclopedic** | Almost always | `site:en.wikipedia.org {topic}`, then `mcp__jina__read_url` top 1-2. Note cited sources as leads. |
| **Academic** | Scientific, scholarly, social-science, economic | `mcp__jina__parallel_search_arxiv` (STEM) or `parallel_search_ssrn` (econ/finance/law/social). Fall back to `{topic} systematic review meta-analysis`. |
| **News** | Current events, contemporaneous reporting | WebSearch filtered to NYT, BBC, Reuters, AP, Guardian, Economist, FT. Then `mcp__jina__read_url` top 2-3. |
| **Primary** | Statistics, regulatory, official positions | `{topic} site:.gov` / `site:.int` / `{org} report {topic}`. WebFetch for plain HTML/PDF. |
| **General** | Always | `{topic}` plain — explainers, longreads, expert blogs. |
| **Forum** | Opinion-heavy, lived experience, unsettled | `site:reddit.com {topic}`, then `mcp__jina__read_url` top 2-3 (Reddit is JS-heavy). |
| **Comparison** | "vs", "or", "compare", "which is better" | `{A} vs {B} {context}`. Flag affiliate / "Top 10" sites. |
| **Specific** | Exact claim/quote to verify (in quotes) | `"{claim}"` plus `"{claim}" fact check` and `"{claim}" debunked`. |
| **Historical** | Topic is historical | `{topic} primary sources` / `archive` / `declassified`. Try news archives. |
| **Regional** | Country/city/locale-specific (regulations, prices, services) | `{topic} site:{country_TLD}` plus locale-specific authority sites. **Search in the local language** for non-English locales. |

**Fetching**: prefer `mcp__jina__read_url` for JS-heavy pages; `WebFetch` for plain HTML, government PDFs, `.gov`/`.int`. See "Web Fetching" in CLAUDE.md. `WebSearch`/`WebFetch` are Claude Code's tool names — on another harness, use its equivalent search and fetch tools.

For full agent prompts including the Regional locale playbook (DE/FR/UK/US/AU), see `references/agent-prompts.md`.

### Step 5: Deduplicate and Note Convergence

Wait for agents, deduplicate by URL (keep richest metadata), and note when independent agents found the same source — convergence raises authority. **Watch for false convergence**: three blogs citing one tweet are *one* source, not three.

### Step 6: Critical Evaluation

**Authority:**

| Source Type | Score |
|-------------|-------|
| Peer-reviewed (esp. systematic reviews / meta-analyses), government statistics, primary documents, well-cited encyclopedia entries | High |
| Established outlets (NYT, BBC, Reuters, AP, Economist, FT), reputable books, official organization reports, established test institutions (Stiftung Warentest, Consumer Reports, Which?) | High |
| Working papers / preprints, named-expert blogs, Wikipedia (no dispute markers), think-tanks, recognized domain sites (Finanztip, Verbraucherzentrale) | Medium |
| Secondary outlets, op-eds by named experts | Medium |
| Reddit threads (>100 upvotes, substantive replies) | Medium-Low |
| Op-eds without expertise, advocacy-org claims about own cause, content marketing | Low |
| **"Top 10 Best X" affiliate listicles, SEO content farms**, low-engagement forums, social media | Very Low |

**Recency** (depends on topic):

| Topic Type | Threshold |
|-----------|-----------|
| Current events, market data, prices, active policy | < 1 month |
| Active research, contested empirical, public health, regulations | < 5 years preferred |
| Established science, well-settled history, mathematics | Mostly irrelevant |
| Historical / biographical / classical | **Primary sources beat recent commentary** |

**Conflicts:** First check if it's a real conflict or different scopes/populations/regions. Otherwise prefer higher authority, then more recent, then primary over secondary. A meta-analysis disagreeing with mainstream news usually wins on the empirical question — but news may correctly capture *what people believe*.

### Step 7: Follow-Up Loop (Standard only)

If a topic area has fewer than 2 sources or the core question is unanswered: identify the gap, generate 1-2 delta queries (alternative terminology, narrower/broader scope, primary-source angle, local-language variant), spawn 1-2 follow-up agents (read-only, same as Step 4), merge.

**Max 1 cycle.** If the gap persists, mark as low confidence in the synthesis.

**Reuse the allocation.** Reuse a worker when practical, and keep follow-ups focused on the named gap. Include descendants and advisor calls in the same task accounting; a new round does not reset a spending limit. Stop when further sources only repeat the findings.

### Step 8: Adversarial Critique (Standard only)

Brief self-challenge:
- What would a disagreer cite? Did the search find that?
- Over-weighting one source type? (all news, no academic — or vice versa)
- "Independent" sources tracing to a single origin? (3 articles citing one study = 1 source)
- Mistaking *what people say is true* for *what is true*?
- **Affiliate, sponsorship, or commercial COI** in any cited source?
- **Assuming a specific country / culture / population**? Verify regional applicability.
- **Survivorship bias** — only hearing from people who succeeded?
- Population/scope/endpoint mismatch between the question and the evidence?

If the critique reveals a blind spot, adjust and lower confidence.

### Step 9: Present Results

**Lead with the answer**, not the research process. Use **inline source counts** ("(3 sources)", "(1 source, low confidence)") instead of a separate Confidence block.

Structure:
1. **Direct answer** with inline source counts
2. **Key references** (1-3) — sources that most shaped the conclusion
3. **Supporting Details** — only sections that add value beyond the answer

Available detail sections (use only those that add value): Background · Evidence · News & Reporting · Comparison · Regional details · Claim Verification · Historical Context · Conflicts · Open Questions.

For the full output template, see `references/output-format.md`.

## Examples

| # | Query | Spawns |
|---|-------|--------|
| 1 | `research-general what does the evidence say about screen time and adolescent sleep` | Encyclopedic, Academic, News, Forum, General |
| 2 | `research-general causes of the 2008 financial crisis` | Encyclopedic, Academic, News (archived), Primary (Fed/SEC), Comparison |
| 3 | `research-general nuclear vs solar economics for grid power` | Academic, Primary (gov energy data), Comparison, News, Encyclopedic |
| 4 | `research-general history of the Suez Canal crisis` | Encyclopedic, Historical, News (archived), Primary (declassified) |
| 5 | `research-general "humans only use 10% of their brain"` | Specific, Academic, Encyclopedic, General |
| 6 | `research-general best mattress brands in Germany price tiers` | Regional (DE), Comparison, Forum, General — flag affiliate listicles |
| 7 | `research-general options for risk-free investments in Germany` | Regional (DE), Primary (BaFin), Authority (Finanztip, Verbraucherzentrale) |
| 8 | `research-general what's the capital of Mongolia` | **Likely answered from existing knowledge.** If searching: Encyclopedic + General only. |

## Troubleshooting

**Agent fails or times out** — Continue with remaining agents. Note the gap in the synthesis.

**No academic sources found** — Try alternative terms (medical/scientific terminology often differs from lay language). If still nothing, note the empirical evidence base is thin.

**Sources disagree along ideological lines** — Separate the empirical claim from the value judgment. Find the underlying primary source. Present what each side argues, then what primary evidence supports — and note where disagreement is genuinely values-based.

**Topic is current and unsettled** — Flag explicitly ("active situation as of {date}; details may shift"). Prefer wire services (Reuters, AP) over editorial outlets.

**All consumer sources are affiliate-driven** — Search for independent test institutions for the locale (Stiftung Warentest, Consumer Reports, Which?, Choice). If none, note that available sources are commercial.