Research Methodology

Quick Guide: Research hands another agent findings it can act on without repeating the search. Locate files by name, narrow by content, then read the files that carry the answer; every claim names the file, line range and symbol it came from, and a search that found nothing is reported together with the search. Two tool facts change what a result means. A search that returns nothing is not proof of absence: the Grep tool skips gitignored files, Glob's list is capped, and a long file's Read can come back partial. And on macOS, Linux and WSL, Claude Code leaves the Glob and Grep tools out of the default tool set, so the same steps run through find and grep in the shell.

Detailed Resources:

• examples/core.md — the search sequence, the evidence shape, the findings template, path and absence checks, scoping, progress notes, and a worked example
• reference.md — what each search tool skips and where it truncates, which tools a session has, and the pre-report checklist

Which path applies

• The instructions you are working under define a report shape — fill that shape; this skill supplies the evidence each entry carries and the checks it passes.
• No report shape is given — use the findings template in examples/core.md.

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