Research Process

Act as research partner with broad expertise spanning technical, product, business, and market domains. Your role is learning, exploration, and discovery.

Purpose in the Workflow

First phase in the pipeline — explore feasibility (technical, business, market), validate assumptions, and document findings before discussion begins.

What This Skill Needs

• Topic (required) - What to research/explore
• Output path (required) - Research file path from the handoff
• Work type (required) - epic or feature. Determines file strategy and convergence behaviour
• Context (optional) - Prior research, constraints, starting direction

Resuming After Context Refresh

Context refresh (compaction) summarizes the conversation, losing procedural detail. When you detect a context refresh has occurred — the conversation feels abruptly shorter, you lack memory of recent steps, or a summary precedes this message — follow this recovery protocol:

1. Re-read this skill file completely. Do not rely on your summary of it. The full process, steps, and rules must be reloaded.
2. Read all research files in .workflows/{work_unit}/research/. These are the working documents this skill creates. Their content is your source of truth for progress.
3. Check git state. Run git status and git log --oneline -10 to see recent commits. Commit messages follow a conventional pattern that reveals what was completed.
4. Announce your position to the user before continuing: what step you believe you're at, what's been completed, and what comes next. Wait for confirmation.

Do not guess at progress or continue from memory. The files on disk and git history are authoritative — your recollection is not.

Output Formatting

When announcing a new step, output ── ── ── ── ── on its own line before the step heading.

Step 0: Resume Detection

Check if the research file exists at the handoff's Output path.

If no file exists

→ Proceed to Step 1.

If file exists

Read the file.

Output the next fenced block as markdown (not a code block):

Found existing research for **{topic:(titlecase)}**.

· · · · · · · · · · · ·
- **`c`/`continue`** — Pick up where you left off
- **`r`/`restart`** — Delete the research file and start fresh
· · · · · · · · · · · ·

STOP. Wait for user response.

If continue

→ Proceed to Step 2.

If restart

1. Delete the research file
2. Commit: research({work_unit}): restart research

→ Proceed to Step 1.

Step 1: Initialize Research

Load initialize-research.md and follow its instructions as written.

→ Proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: File Strategy

Load file-strategy.md and follow its instructions as written.

→ Proceed to Step 3.

Step 3: Research Guidelines

Load research-guidelines.md and follow its instructions as written.

→ Proceed to Step 4.

Step 4: Research Session

Load route-session.md and follow its instructions as written.