# Daily Research Brief

> workflow template — researcher gathers sources, writer synthesizes into a 400-word brief; pre-installed, activates in Phase 2

- Skill: `vodouai/daily-research-brief` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add vodouai/daily-research-brief`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/vodouai/daily-research-brief/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Docs & Writing
- Author: VodouAI (https://skillmd.com/u/vodouai)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/vodouai/daily-research-brief

---


# daily-research-brief

A 2-stage pipeline for "give me a researched take on X by tomorrow morning." Researcher pulls sources, writer synthesizes. Ships as a single markdown file the user can paste into Slack/Telegram/their docs.

**Phase 1 status:** pre-installed but inactive (template_kind loader is Phase 2 work).

## Stages

### Stage 1 — Research

<!-- AGENT_ACTIONS_1: {
  "step_key": "research",
  "assignee_default": "researcher",
  "skills": ["board-worker", "web-research", "memory-search"],
  "workspace": "scratch",
  "required_artifacts": {
    "metadata.sources_count": "[5-9]|[1-9][0-9]+",
    "metadata.findings_doc_path": "\\.md$"
  },
  "on_success": "synthesize",
  "on_failure": "research",
  "max_runtime_seconds": 2400,
  "max_retries": 1,
  "budget_usd_cap": 3.00
} -->

Researcher gathers ≥5 sources (web + memory), writes them up in a findings markdown file with sentiment + relevance scoring. The dispatcher validates source count + file path before advancing.

### Stage 2 — Synthesize

<!-- AGENT_ACTIONS_2: {
  "step_key": "synthesize",
  "assignee_default": "writer",
  "skills": ["board-worker", "brief-writer"],
  "workspace": "scratch",
  "required_artifacts": {
    "metadata.brief_path": "\\.md$",
    "metadata.word_count": "(3[5-9][0-9]|4[0-9][0-9]|5[0-9][0-9])"
  },
  "on_success": null,
  "on_failure": "synthesize",
  "max_runtime_seconds": 1200,
  "max_retries": 1,
  "budget_usd_cap": 1.50
} -->

Writer reads the researcher's findings doc + writes a 350-599 word brief (regex enforces the band). Output: a markdown file. Pipeline complete.

## Total budget cap (recommendation)

~$4.50 per brief. Cheap by design — the goal is "I can run this 5x/week without thinking about cost."

## When to use this template vs not

✓ **Use it when** you want a researched take on a single topic, ≤500 words, by tomorrow.

✗ **Skip it when**:
- You need ≥1000 words → split into multiple research-brief runs + a synthesis task
- You need code or numerical analysis → use `ship-a-feature` or create a custom pipeline
- You need real-time updates → this is for end-of-day briefs, not live monitoring