sorawit-w storm
Research a topic the way Stanford's STORM does its pre-writing: discover the perspectives that matter, ask grounded questions from each, and synthesize the answers into a cited briefing. The wedge is breadth of perspectives — what different lenses surface about a topic — not breadth of sources on a single question.
This is an agent-native port of the STORM mechanism, not Nav Toor's 4-prompt chat workflow. The agent already holds retrieval, so grounded is the default — there is no un-grounded mode.
Phase 0 — Boundary gate
Activate storm when the request wants sourced external knowledge across perspectives. Route away otherwise:
| Request shape | Skill |
|---|---|
| "Research X", "what's known about Y", "survey the evidence on Z", "grounded briefing on…" | storm |
An upstream skill (e.g. team-composer) needs sourced knowledge it can't reason to |
storm (hand-off) |
| Single-source-of-truth fact-check, one authoritative report, "verify this claim" | deep-research |
| Opinion, critique, planning, "assemble a team", "review my plan" | team-composer |
| General agent loop / build work | the harness / cerby |
The deep-research line is the load-bearing one: it owns source-breadth (fan-out, fetch, adversarially verify into one report). storm owns perspective-breadth. If the request wants the ground truth on one question, it's deep-research. If it wants what several lenses reveal about a topic, it's storm.
Phase 1 — Perspectives in
Two paths:
- Seeded (hand-off). A caller supplied perspectives (e.g.
team-composerpasses its active roles). Use them verbatim as the perspective set — they are already domain-relevant lenses. Do not re-discover. - Discovered (standalone). No seed. Discover perspectives by surveying adjacent material on the topic (STORM's move): a quick retrieval pass to find the recurring stakeholder/expert/angle framings, then name 3–4 distinct ones. A fixed generalist set is one possible seed, never the only option.
Bound it: max_perspectives (default 4). Stated up front so the user can correct it.
Phase 2 — Grounded Q&A per perspective
For each perspective, generate questions that lens would ask, and answer them via retrieval. Bound: max_turns_per_perspective (default 3) — at most max_perspectives × max_turns retrieval cycles total.
- Every answer carries its source(s). Keep a source→claim map from here forward — synthesis depends on it (see
references/honesty-rubric.md). - Retrieval is capability-gated: use whatever retrieval the runtime holds (web search/fetch, a
*_searchMCP, drive search). Do not assume a specific tool name. - If a question's retrieval comes up empty, record the answer as
[unverified / reasoning-only]— do not pad it with confident introspection.
Mechanics (question generation, dedup, the contradiction-map pass) live in references/loop-mechanics.md.
Phase 3 — Curate → outline
Cluster findings across perspectives, dedupe sources, and draft a structure. This is where overlap collapses and the shape of the briefing emerges. Carry the source→claim map through unchanged.
Phase 4 — Cited synthesis
Emit the output. Every factual line is either source-attributed or tagged [unverified / reasoning-only] — no exceptions. The honesty rule is structural: because the source→claim map is carried through Phases 2–3, a line with no mapped source cannot be presented as verified.
Output formats:
briefing(default) — decision-oriented: a one-paragraph summary, findings ranked by reliability (each with supporting and challenging sources), the actionable insight, and open questions. Each claim cited.report(--report) — a longer sourced write-up (closer to STORM's article form) for when breadth matters more than turnaround.
Phase 5 — Optional rigor passes (flagged on; --no-rigor to skip)
Cheap, on by default, off with --no-rigor. Both are specified in references/honesty-rubric.md:
- Contradiction map — where perspectives clash, what they all agree on, and what none addressed (blind spots).
- Peer review / confidence — a confidence score per finding tied to source-backing (not fluency), the weakest link, a bias check, and the missing perspective. This pass exists primarily to catch STORM's two self-flagged failure modes — source-bias transfer and over-association of unrelated facts — so it is not cosmetic.
Inputs / outputs contract
Standalone:
/storm <topic> [--report] [--no-rigor] [--max-perspectives N] [--max-turns N]
No seed perspectives → Phase 1 discovers them.
team-composer hand-off:
- In: the research question +
team-composer's active roles, passed as the seed perspectives. - Out: a cited briefing returned to the panel, which folds it back into its conclusion.
Invariant: no claim ships without a source or an explicit [unverified / reasoning-only] tag. With retrieval unavailable, the entire output is tagged — the honesty invariant holds by construction, not by reminder.
Capability-gated retrieval & graceful degradation
Gate on "is a retrieval tool available in this runtime?" — not on which agent or vendor is running (a brittle check). If none is available, do not refuse silently and do not fabricate: produce the perspective structure and reasoning, label every line [unverified / reasoning-only], and state plainly that retrieval was unavailable so the output is ungrounded.
What this skill is NOT
- Not single-source-of-truth research. One authoritative report from source fan-out is
deep-research. storm is multi-perspective. - Not a panel. Opinion, critique, planning, team assembly →
team-composer. - Not Co-STORM. No human-in-the-loop turn-by-turn collaboration (separate, heavier paper).
- Not a conversation-simulation engine. The bounded Phase-2 Q&A is the whole loop; no agent-vs-agent dialogue beyond it.
- Not a Wikipedia-article generator by default. Briefing is the default; the long report is opt-in.
Cross-skill integration
| Skill | Relationship |
|---|---|
deep-research (if installed) |
The distinct neighbor. deep-research owns single-topic, source-of-truth research (fan-out → fetch → adversarial verify → one cited report). storm owns multi-perspective research. Route "verify this claim" / "give me the authoritative answer on X" there; route "what do different lenses reveal about X" here. |
team-composer |
The primary caller. When a panel hits a grounding need ("verify the current state of X", "survey what's known about Y", "we're guessing here"), team-composer hands off to storm with its active roles as the seed perspectives; storm returns a cited briefing the panel folds into its conclusion. The team-composer-side routing — a storm row in its Cross-Skill table + a grounding-need trigger, plus the contradiction-map and peer-review lenses storm seeded — is wired as of team-composer v5.4.0. |
sub-agent-coordinator |
If per-perspective Q&A is heavy enough to parallelize, the coordinator owns the spawning/briefing — storm does not duplicate that logic. |
Slash invocation
/agent-skills:storm <topic>
/agent-skills:storm <topic> --report
/agent-skills:storm <topic> --no-rigor --max-perspectives 3
Equivalent to the natural-language trigger, just unambiguous.
Status
v0.1 — new skill. Ports the STORM mechanism (perspective discovery → grounded per-perspective Q&A → cited synthesis), bounded by two knobs (max_perspectives, max_turns_per_perspective). The team-composer back-port (the grounding-need hand-off row + the contradiction-map lens in its Discuss phase + peer-review/confidence in its Audit phase) shipped in team-composer v5.4.0.
When to use this skill
Load this skill when:
- The user wants grounded research across perspectives on a topic ("research X", "what's known about Y", "survey the evidence on Z", "build me a grounded briefing on…").
- An upstream skill needs sourced external knowledge it can't reason its way to.
Do NOT load this skill when:
- The user wants the authoritative answer on a single question or to verify one claim →
deep-research. - The user wants opinion, critique, planning, or a team assembled →
team-composer. - There's no external-knowledge need — let the normal skill stack handle it.
Tags: research, retrieval-grounded, cited-briefing, perspectives, storm, hand-off-target