Upstream Source Research

Decide first whether ordinary web research is enough or whether the task should escalate.

Default Approach

• Start with the smallest viable method.
• Prefer hosted views and web fetches for short lookups.
• Switch to gh, glab, or another relevant CLI when you need better access to issues, PRs, release metadata, tags, or repository navigation.
• Use a shallow clone into /tmp when you need local source inspection, fast code search, commit history, or broader reading across many files.
• Keep the goal narrow: inspect and extract conclusions, not set up a long-lived checkout unless the task truly needs one.

When To Escalate Beyond Web

• The answer depends on real source code across multiple files.
• You need issue, PR, tag, branch, or release data that is awkward or incomplete via web fetches.
• Browser, fetch, or API calls are hitting rate limits or other access limits.
• The investigation is large enough that repeated web requests are slower or noisier than local inspection.
• You need repository-wide search, blame, or commit-level context.