Deep Research V8.1

This skill is for evidence-rich research outputs, not for every question that happens to mention “analysis”.

The V8 shift is simple:

Single-agent first. Start with one lead agent and only fan out when parallel work will clearly help.
Thin harness, fat skill. Put reusable judgment and workflow here; keep deterministic checks in scripts.
Context organization over prompt stuffing. Load the minimum active context bundle, then pull in references only when needed.
Eval and observability built in. A good report is not enough; the run must also be diagnosable and improvable.

What this skill should produce

Choose the lightest artifact that satisfies the task.

Output type	Use when	Typical length	Required artifacts
Brief memo	user wants a concise answer with evidence	800-1800 words	`research-plan.md`, `registry.md`, `draft.md`, `run-summary.json`
Full report	user asks for comprehensive analysis / literature review / decision document	2500-6000 words	all core artifacts + `evaluation.md`
Delta update	user says “continue”, “second round”, “what changed”, “deepen round 2”	600-1800 words	prior round handoff (`references/handoff-format.md`) + new notes + delta draft