External Research Skill

Overview

This skill defines the mandatory methodology for conducting external research during planning and implementation phases. It ensures that all external knowledge is gathered from authoritative sources, properly validated, version-aware, and correctly cited.

Why External Research is Critical

The Problem with Model Memory

Large Language Models have knowledge cutoffs and can hallucinate API details, deprecated patterns, or incorrect version-specific behavior. Relying solely on model memory for technical implementation details is dangerous and unacceptable.

Common failure modes when relying on model memory: