Applied Research Craft

Applied-Research Craft

Codified at I86 Wave R close (drain7) from the operator's framing at the I86 Wave H Combo C+D Lane D ratify gate (2026-05-19): "applied research is a hot topic today and a competitive advantage if properly industrialized". The craft turns research grounding from afterthought ornament into compounding doctrine. Ratified by D-IH-86-CT alongside the parent rule.

When to use this skill

Read this skill before:

• Authoring a new canonical CSV (RULE 1 — internal + external research backing mandatory).
• Authoring a doctrine canonical, cursor rule, skill, or decision-register row that introduces a novel framing (RULE 2 — external citation mandatory).
• Closing a wave inside a cluster-coordinator initiative (RULE 3 — "Research enrichment" subsection in wave-closure report).
• Triaging a research need surfaced by an inline-ratify gate Principle 1.5 trigger.

This skill assumes you have already read akos-applied-research-discipline.mdc (the when) + RESEARCH_HEAD_DISCIPLINE.md (the parent doctrine).

Core principles

Principle 1 — Distinguish evidence-sweep from research-sweep

These are two different sweeps with different tools:

They are NOT substitutes. Novel framings require BOTH. Evidence-sweep alone surfaces "the repo is silent on this" — that's the signal to invoke research-sweep, not the conclusion that grounding isn't needed.

Principle 2 — Cite inline, not in a separate dossier

External citations belong in the canonical body or its Evidence-base section, NOT in a separate research-dossier file. Inline citation is half of the load-bearing claim — the doctrine says "X because Y (per Source Z)" and the reader can verify in seconds. A separate dossier breaks the citation-to-claim adjacency and creates inventory rot.

Citation format: prefer named author + year + title + (chapter/section) for books and reports; URL for vendor docs; DOI or stable URL for academic papers. The drain7 proposal §4 is a worked example of a 5-citation block.

Principle 3 — The novelty test for external citation

Ask: "Would a future reader, reading this canonical/rule/skill cold, encounter a position they could not derive from prior Holistika doctrine + first-principles thinking?"

• Yes → novel framing → external citation MANDATORY (3-5 cites for the framing).
• No → refinement of prior Holistika ratification → external citation OPTIONAL (the prior decision-register row IS the precedent).

Refinements include: v2 extensions of v1 doctrine, tightenings of existing rules, new specialty mints that follow the established quartet pattern. Novel framings include: new pillars (e.g., Quality Fabric architecture), new mechanical contracts (e.g., the rule × skill pairing contract), new posture defaults (e.g., Option-5 conflict surfacing).

Principle 4 — Wave-closure research enrichment is structural, not ornamental

Every wave-close UAT (per akos-planning-traceability.mdc §"UAT quality bar" §10 + parent rule RULE 3) carries a ## Research enrichment subsection naming:

• Which canonicals were enriched with new research material during the wave.
• Which canonicals were identified as needing enrichment but deferred to a future wave.
• Which external sources were newly surfaced during the wave that should inform future authoring.

The subsection is brief (5-15 lines) and makes the operator's lived research practice trackable across waves.

Per-canonical-class craft

Canonical CSV mint (RULE 1)

Authoring sequence:

1. Internal evidence-sweep: Grep + Read every existing canonical CSV + every decision row + every process_list row + every baseline_organisation row that bears on the new register. Document the inventory in the ratifying decision row's rationale cell or in a planning-notes file.
2. Novelty test: is the new register a clone-of-existing-pattern (e.g., new sibling adapter registry following Normalised Adapter Pattern) or a novel framing? Clone → optional external cite. Novel → mandatory 3+ external cites.
3. External research-sweep: if novel, WebSearch 5-10 queries on the new register's domain. Capture authoritative sources. Cite at least 3 in the canonical's Evidence-base section.
4. Inline citations in linked_canonicals: frontmatter for internal precedents.
5. Evidence-base section in the canonical body for external citations + the novelty rationale.

Doctrine canonical / cursor rule / skill mint (RULE 2)

Same as CSV mint above, but the novelty test is the gating mechanism. Refinements need 0 external cites (Holistika precedent suffices); novel framings need 3-5 external cites.

The drain7 proposal itself is a worked example: rule × skill pairing as a workspace-binding contract is novel enough to warrant 5 citations (ACT-R + Pattern Language + SRE Book + SECI + Anthropic Skills); the per-skill mints inside drain7 are refinements (each skill is a refinement of inline-ratify-craft's shape) so no per-skill external cites.

Wave-closure research enrichment subsection authoring

Template:

## Research enrichment (Wave <letter>)

### Canonicals enriched this wave

- `<canonical-path>` — added §"Evidence base" rows for [topic]; cites [Source A] + [Source B] (per RULE 1 backfill protocol).

### Canonicals identified as needing enrichment (deferred)

- `<canonical-path>` — forward-charter to Wave <letter+1> via OPS-NN-MM (next-review-trigger: <condition>).

### External sources newly surfaced this wave

- [Source A: full citation + URL] — relevant for [domain X canonicals]; consider citing in future mints.
- [Source B: full citation + URL] — relevant for [domain Y canonicals].

Keep this subsection ≤ 15 lines per wave-close.

Pre-flight checklist (before any canonical/rule/skill mint)

1. Internal evidence-sweep completed (Grep + Read + Glob over relevant repo state).
2. Novelty test answered (yes → external cites mandatory; no → optional).
3. If novel: external research-sweep completed (5-10 queries; sources captured).
4. Inline citations integrated into canonical body (not separate dossier).
5. linked_canonicals: frontmatter populated for internal precedents.
6. Evidence-base section (or equivalent) carries external citations.
7. Wave-closure UAT will include ## Research enrichment subsection.
8. Operator-discretion exemption checked (commit message carries rule-exempt-research-discipline: <reason> only when time-pressed AND backfill-deferred-and-tracked).

Anti-patterns (forbidden by parent canonical §7)

• AP1 — Research-as-ornament: citing 1 paper to look rigorous, without integrating the source's actual position into the doctrine. The cite is decorative; the doctrine ignores the source.
• AP2 — Research-after-the-fact-to-justify: drafting doctrine first, then googling cites that match. Inverts the discipline; the doctrine is unfalsifiable.
• AP3 — Research-as-procrastination: spending 5 hours on WebSearch instead of authoring; the research becomes the deliverable, the doctrine never lands.
• AP4 — Copy-paste-citations: citing a source's abstract without reading the source. The cite is unverifiable; future readers can't validate.

Recovery patterns

• R1 — Time-pressed mint: invoke operator-discretion exemption via rule-exempt-research-discipline: <one-clause reason> in commit message; backfill in next wave's research enrichment subsection.
• R2 — Research-sweep returns nothing useful: collapse to "the field is silent on this" + cite the search query + cite at least 1 first-principles reasoning chain. Acceptable when the doctrine is genuinely first-of-its-kind.
• R3 — Found contradicting sources: surface as inline-ratify gate (per akos-inline-ratification.mdc) — let operator choose framing rather than silently pick one.

Cross-references

• Parent rule: akos-applied-research-discipline.mdc.
• Parent canonical: RESEARCH_HEAD_DISCIPLINE.md.
• Sister skills: inline-ratify-craft Principle 1.5 (research-sweep at inline-ratify gates), index-integrity-craft, external-render-craft.
• Worked examples: drain7 proposal §4 (5-citation block) + I86 Wave H Lane D dispatch (Combo C+D ratification) + I84 P3 substrate doctrine evidence-base (named author + year per-row).
• Ratifying decisions: D-IH-86-CT (this skill mint), D-IH-86-T (cluster burndown plan that included Combo C+D Research Head discipline).

Source: FraysaXII/openclaw-akos — distributed by TomeVault.