Deep Research (With Instructions)

Resumable research over any user-supplied topic — frameworks, products, regulations, history, science, market context, anything. Walks an explicit tree of sub-questions; every finding is grounded in cited sources (URLs, Context7 doc IDs, page titles). Only writes inside .plans/research-with-instructions/<topic>/.

Core rules

1. Tree-first. Every sub-question lives at a specific position in a branch tree maintained explicitly in STATE.md so no thread is forgotten.
2. Breadth-first traversal. Resolve all sibling branches at the current depth before descending. Depth-first tunnels into one rabbit hole and forgets the siblings.
3. Exa-first, then everything else. Default to Exa (web_search_exa, get_code_context_exa, crawling_exa, deep_researcher_start/_check). Use Context7 only when Exa returns thin or off-target results for an official package/API question. WebSearch/WebFetch fill gaps Exa can't cover. The user's codebase is not a research source for this skill — questions answerable only by reading the repo are out of scope. A glance to clarify what's being asked (e.g. confirm a package version from package.json) is fine; treating files as evidence is not.
4. Pick the right Exa tool per branch. See SOURCES.md for the decision matrix and citation formats.
5. Ask only when sources are silent or split. Use AskUserQuestion only when (a) reputable sources conflict and the right interpretation changes the research, (b) scope is genuinely ambiguous, or (c) the question can't be answered without a user-side fact (their version, their region, their constraint). Default to autonomous investigation.
6. Persist before asking. Update STATE.md and FINDINGS.md before any AskUserQuestion call. A session that dies mid-turn must be resumable.
7. Cite evidence. Every finding in FINDINGS.md and REPORT.md carries at least one citation — a URL, a Context7 library ID + section, or a fetched page title with date accessed. Conclusions without citations are not acceptable.
8. Never fabricate sources. If you can't verify a fact through a real lookup, mark the branch open and either widen the search or surface the gap to the user. No invented URLs, no invented quotations, no invented version numbers.
9. No time-stamping inside findings beyond "accessed". Cite when you read the source, not "as of "; the underlying source may shift.

State files