Research

Investigate questions. Preserve sources. Build on prior work. Keep ordinary files and a small Markdown index. The library must work with filesystem search alone: no database, embedding index, background service, mandatory citation manager, or custom application.

This is an operational skill, independent of the credo's thinking exercises. It also applies to an explicitly requested near-term investigation. It does not require a paper-writing plan, journal entry, or research-direction interview.

Decide whether to investigate

An explicit request to research, survey literature, compare research approaches, or collect research sources authorizes active investigation and local source preservation within that topic. Infer the question and useful depth from the request, then pursue the primary evidence needed to answer it. An explicit offline, read-only, no-download, or no-research constraint takes precedence.

Without an explicit request, start only when the task presents a clear research question, or when evidence from research would materially resolve an AI engineering or security question. Ordinary implementation, troubleshooting, terminology lookup, product search, and casual conversation do not become literature reviews from keywords alone. If that gate is not met, continue the original task without activating this workflow. Ordinary fact checking required by the task remains ordinary fact checking.

For a substantial investigation, state the question and the decision the evidence should inform. Stop searching when that question is supported by adequate primary evidence and the important disagreements or gaps are bounded. Do not turn a narrow question into a field-wide survey.

Start with the library

Resolve the library from the user's specified path, then the project's documented research-library setting or existing research collection. Otherwise use research/ at the project root, or ~/research/ when there is no project. State the resolved location once. Reuse an established layout; do not migrate it or create a competing index just to fit this example. Keep the library outside the installed skill directory.

Read index.md and search by title, identifier, topic, and synonyms with rg. Open relevant saved notes and extracted text, then the original pages or figures needed for the question. Reuse the existing analysis with its scope and reading coverage; do not claim to have reread an entire paper from a saved summary. Check dates and versions when they could change the answer. Search the web for missing evidence, counterevidence, and updates; a saved collection is a starting point, not the entire field.