External research

Choose the smallest reliable approach by accuracy, token cost, request cost, and elapsed time. Reassess only when evidence is missing or unreliable; do not repeat equivalent retrieval without a concrete reason or inspect related repositories/dependencies unless needed.

Approaches

Options, cheapest to most expensive:

1. glob, grep, read, and shell filters for local inspection.
2. LSP/MCP/IDE semantic tools (IntelliJ IDEA, Metals LSP).
3. The cellar skill, when available, for JVM dependency public APIs.
4. gh and az read-only subcommands for GitHub and Azure queries.
5. webfetch for a known URL.
6. websearch when no URL is known (tool or skill, whatever is available).
7. git ls-remote for refs, then cached Git clones for source and history.
8. Maven, Gradle, sbt, npm metadata, and archive tools for published packages.

Rules: