Research Design Helper

research-design-helper

Stage 3a (sharp problem framing) and front-of-Stage 4 (model design) helper. Part of the research-hub skill pack — works alongside Zotero, Obsidian, and NotebookLM workflows but does not require any of them. Domain-agnostic Socratic guide that walks a researcher through 5 short segments and saves the result as .research/design_brief.md.

The skill does not invent your research question or model design. Like research-context-compressor, it leaves blanks rather than guess. Its value is structured prompting: forcing you to articulate what you'd otherwise leave implicit, before you spend weeks coding.

When to use

Trigger phrases:

• "Frame this research question."
• "Design my study before I start coding."
• "Help me think through what model to build."
• "Sharpen my hypothesis."
• "Walk me through the design."
• "Build a design brief."

Not for:

• Writing actual model code (that's the user's work, optionally with codex-delegate for boilerplate).
• Project context manifests (that's research-context-compressor).
• Literature comparison (that's literature-triage-matrix).
• Manuscript writing (that's academic-writing-skills).

Inputs

In priority order:

1. .research/project_manifest.yml if it exists — for project context (research_question may already be partially filled).
2. .research/design_brief.md if it exists — for refresh, not first-run.
3. .research/literature_matrix.md if it exists — for prior-art context when discussing identifiability.
4. The user's free-text answers during the conversation.

Do NOT scan code, data, or PDFs. This is a conversational skill.

Workflow

Run the 5 Socratic segments in order, one at a time. For each, ask the listed questions, capture the user's answer, then save verbatim to the corresponding section of .research/design_brief.md. If the user can't answer a segment yet, write _TODO: <reason>_ and move on; do not fabricate.

Segments + their prompts: references/socratic-segments.md.

Output: .research/design_brief.md

Use the template at references/design_brief_template.md (sibling file in this skill). Fill the 5 sections with the user's answers verbatim. Frontmatter is required:

project: <from project_manifest.yml or asked at start>
last_updated: <ISO date>
stage: design
status: draft     # draft | reviewed | locked

If the file already exists, update don't replace: keep human-edited sections intact, only fill blanks unless the user explicitly says "regenerate from scratch".

After saving, print a short report:

[research-design-helper]
  Wrote: .research/design_brief.md
  Sections completed: 4 / 5 (Risk register marked _TODO_ — circle back)
  Strongest spot: Identifiability check — clear discrimination via negative control.
  Weakest spot: Validation plan — baseline not yet specified.
  Suggested next: refine the validation baseline, then re-run with "regenerate from scratch" to lock the brief.

Token-saving behavior

• Don't repeat the user's answers back at length — quote in the written brief, summarize one sentence in chat.
• Don't dump the whole template into the chat — write the file, then report which sections were filled.
• Skip segments the user can't answer; record _TODO_ and move on. The point is not to complete every section in one session — it's to surface the gaps.

What NOT to do

• Do NOT invent the research question. If the user is vague, surface the vagueness; do not fill it in for them.
• Do NOT propose model architectures or technologies. That's Stage 4 implementation work, owned by the user with help from codex-delegate for boilerplate. This skill stops at the spec.
• Do NOT write to .paper/ — that's paper-memory-builder.
• Do NOT touch .research/project_manifest.yml — that's research-context-compressor. The two are complementary; the manifest captures STATE, the brief captures DESIGN INTENT.
• Do NOT skip segments silently. If a segment is blank, the brief must say _TODO_ so future sessions (or the orienter) can flag it.

See also

• references/socratic-segments.md — full prompts for each of the 5 segments
• references/design_brief_template.md — Markdown template for the output file