Research Plus

Spin up a background subagent to do the research, so the main session keeps working while it reads. In Claude Code that is the Agent tool run in the background — Explore for read-only source sweeps, general-purpose when the research needs web fetches or other tool calls. In harnesses without subagents, do the research inline and say so.

The subagent's job:

1. Investigate the question against primary sources — official docs, package source (vendor/ for Composer, node_modules/ for npm), specs, first-party APIs — never a secondary write-up of them. Follow every claim back to the source that owns it. In a Laravel project with Boost, prefer the search-docs MCP tool over web search for framework and package questions — it returns version-pinned ecosystem docs.
2. Write the findings to a single Markdown file, citing each claim's source — a URL, a file path, or package@version.
3. Save it where the repo already keeps such notes; match the existing convention. If there is none, put it somewhere sensible (.scratch/research/<slug>.md is a fine default) and say where.

The final report back to the main session is the answer plus the file path — not a re-paste of the whole document.

Wayfinder integration

When resolving a wayfinder-plus research ticket, commit the findings file to a throwaway research/<ticket-slug> branch and post the answer with a pointer to that branch as the ticket's resolution comment, then close the ticket. Research tickets are the one type a charting session may fire in parallel — one subagent per ticket, one branch each.

When you're done

A background subagent has no live session to print into, so the direction goes in the findings file — last section, and repeated in the ticket resolution comment when there is a ticket. Write it whether the research answered the question or not.