Best Practice Research

Best-Practice Research

Use this skill when a task depends on current external best practices, version-aware guidance, standards, official recommendations, or upstream behavior. This is a workflow wrapper: it routes evidence gathering and synthesis; it is not a new research authority and it does not replace researcher.

Purpose

Produce a cited, reusable best-practice answer or handoff that separates current external evidence from repo-local facts and dependency-selection decisions. For pre-planning investigation, this is the ordinary first research wrapper: gather official/upstream evidence, then hand it to $ralplan or the caller as planning input. Do not present $best-practice-research as a final architecture component or as a validator-gated research loop.

Terminal By Default

This skill is terminal and read-only by default. It gathers evidence and produces a cited recommendation with a handoff, then stops. Do not write or edit files, create or amend commits, run mutating commands, or otherwise modify repository state under this skill — even when the question has clear implementation implications. When implementation is warranted, stop and hand off rather than continuing: name $ralplan for planning and $ultragoal, $team, or executor for execution, and resume only after the user explicitly switches to that workflow.

Activate When

• The user asks for best practices, recommended approach, current guidance, official recommendations, standards, or version-aware external behavior.
• $ralplan, $deep-interview, $team, or another workflow needs current external evidence before planning or execution can be correct.
• The task involves an already chosen technology and needs authoritative usage guidance, migration notes, API behavior, lifecycle rules, or current safety guidance.

Do Not Activate When

• The answer is fully repo-local; use explore for codebase facts.
• The main question is whether to adopt, replace, upgrade, or compare dependencies; use dependency-expert.
• The user only needs implementation against already-grounded requirements; use executor, $ralph, or $team as appropriate.
• The task can be answered from stable local project conventions without current external lookup.

Specialist Routing

1. Use explore first for brownfield facts: current code usage, local constraints, versions, config, and integration points.
2. Use researcher for official/upstream docs, release notes, standards, migration guides, source-backed examples, and current best-practice evidence for an already chosen technology.
3. Use dependency-expert only for adoption/upgrade/replacement/comparison decisions.
4. Return to the caller with explicit evidence, uncertainty, and any implementation handoff constraints.

Source-Quality Rules

• Prefer official documentation, upstream source, release notes, changelogs, standards, and maintainer guidance.
• Include source URLs for material claims.
• State date/version context for current best-practice claims.
• Label third-party summaries as supplemental; do not use them before official/upstream sources.
• Flag stale, conflicting, undocumented, or version-mismatched evidence.
• Do not over-fetch: gather the smallest evidence set that can support the decision.

Workflow

1. Classify the question: conceptual best practice, implementation guidance, migration/version guidance, standards/compliance guidance, or mixed local + external guidance.
2. Gather repo-local facts with explore when local usage or constraints affect the answer.
3. Gather external evidence with researcher when current or version-aware practice affects correctness.
4. Synthesize a concise answer with source quality, version/date context, caveats, and an implementation or planning handoff.
5. Stop when the answer is grounded enough for the caller; otherwise report the exact blocker or specialist handoff needed.

Output Contract

## Best-Practice Research: <question>

### Direct Recommendation
<actionable guidance or decision support>

### Evidence Used
- Official/upstream: <source URL> — <what it establishes>
- Supplemental, if any: <source URL> — <why it is secondary>

### Version / Date Context
<versions, dates, release channels, or unknowns>

### Repo-Local Context
<facts from explore, or "not needed">

### Boundaries / Non-goals
<what this research does not decide>

### Handoff
<planning/execution/test implications; name the next workflow — `$ralplan` for planning, `$ultragoal`/`$team`/`executor` for execution — and note that this skill stops here unless the user explicitly switches workflows>

Stop Rules

• Stop after a source-backed recommendation is reusable by the caller.
• Stop and route upward if the task becomes dependency comparison, broad architecture, or implementation.
• Do not continue researching when remaining work would only polish wording rather than change the recommendation.
• This skill never implements. After delivering the recommendation and handoff, stop; do not modify repo files or repo state. Resume only when the user explicitly switches to a planning or implementation workflow named in the handoff.

Task: {{ARGUMENTS}}