Research

Treat prior knowledge as a hypothesis. Open live sources, trace every load-bearing claim, search for disconfirming evidence, and label uncertainty.

The machine-readable onboarding contract lists external prerequisites.

Method

1. Define the real question and the claims the answer depends on. Ask only when an unresolved ambiguity would change what is researched.
2. Choose search breadth by the claim: open the owning primary source directly for a specific authoritative fact; broaden the search when the question, source ownership, coverage, or disagreement remains unresolved.
3. Match evidence to claim type using the evidence thresholds; social sampling is owned by source selection.
4. Resolve source conflicts explicitly; do not average incompatible claims.
5. Answer with conclusion first, evidence near each claim, freshness, and calibrated confidence.

Read references/methodology.md for evidence thresholds and independent verification. Read references/sources.md when selecting search/browser surfaces.

Runtime and browser

Use the live tools exposed by the current runtime; do not assume Claude-only names. Prefer purpose-built connectors/APIs for structured resources. Before browser work, follow x9-browser-session.