High-Signal Research

The failure mode this kills: one search, then everything else confabulated from training data, padded with SEO articles written to rank for agents rather than to be correct. That produces confident, outdated, wrong answers. Research means reading current primary sources, not pattern-matching memory.

Two hard rules

1. No coasting. One search is never the research. Run several varied queries, open multiple sources, and read them. Any claim about current or version-specific behaviour must trace to a source you actually opened this session — not to training data. If you're stating something from memory, say so, then go verify it.
2. Source quality is gated. Prefer primary, high-signal sources. Actively distrust and avoid agent-bait. A wrong source is worse than no source.

Source tiers

Tier A — primary, trust first:

• Official docs, specs, standards, RFCs for the actual thing.
• The source code itself and its issue tracker / PRs / discussions on GitHub/GitLab — what the code does, and what the maintainers say.
• Release notes / changelogs / migration guides (for "what changed" and "current version").