research-topic

name	research-topic
description	Carry a substantive research question from framing through source collection, analysis, original synthesis, and expert reporting. Use when the user asks to investigate a technology, method, scientific or actuarial topic, benchmark options, produce an evidence-backed recommendation, or develop a rigorous research paper.

Research Topic

Purpose

Produce a decision-ready answer whose claims, assumptions, conflicts, and remaining uncertainty can be inspected and reproduced.

Inputs

• Research question, audience, decision, scope, and freshness requirement.
• Definitions, domain constraints, and excluded topics.
• Available sources, datasets, repositories, and access limitations.
• Expected output form and time budget.

Scope Boundary

This owns an end-to-end research question and decision-ready synthesis. Use research-quality alone for a narrow evidence or claim audit.

Process

1. Frame the question, decision, definitions, and stopping criteria.
2. List decisive subquestions and what evidence would change the conclusion.
3. Search primary sources first: standards, official documentation, papers, original data, maintained repositories, and release history.
4. Use secondary sources to discover context or conflicts, not as automatic proof.
5. Record a compact source map with provenance, date, scope, quality, license when relevant, and contribution to the answer.
6. Extract facts separately from calculations, assumptions, and interpretation.
7. Compare options on task-relevant dimensions without manufacturing a universal score.
8. Seek disconfirming evidence, reconcile contradictions, and test key claims with a small experiment when practical.
9. For a paper, build a claim-evidence outline and read references/research-paper-standard.md before prose drafting.
10. Synthesize an original argument: outcome first, strongest evidence, tradeoffs, limitations, and implications. Do not reproduce the order or phrasing of source summaries.
11. Edit for natural expert prose: remove canned transitions, repetitive framing, generic significance claims, and paragraphs without evidence or reasoning.
12. Audit material claims and citation metadata against sources; stop when new research is unlikely to change the decision or argument.

Constraints

• Do not collect sources indefinitely after the decision is stable.
• Do not cite popularity, snippets, or generated summaries as primary evidence.
• Do not copy source text beyond necessary quotation and license limits.
• Do not hide unavailable sources or failed reproductions.
• Do not turn separate quantitative dimensions into an arbitrary composite ranking.
• Do not present generated prose, citations, calculations, or interpretations as verified until they have been checked.
• Do not make the paper sound authoritative by hiding methodological uncertainty or required AI-use disclosure.

Verification

• Every material factual claim maps to an inspectable source.
• Source dates and versions are appropriate for the question.
• Calculations or experiments include enough method detail to reproduce them.
• Conflicts and uncertainty are visible in the synthesis.
• The recommendation follows from the evidence and stated priorities.
• The paper makes a specific contribution, preserves a traceable argument, and reads as one authored work rather than stitched summaries.

Failure Modes

• A source dump with no decision or synthesis.
• A recommendation driven by stars, branding, or familiarity.
• Overclaiming from one benchmark or dataset.
• Treating lack of primary access as permission to imply certainty.
• Continuing research because no explicit stop condition was set.
• A polished manuscript with no defensible contribution, shallow literature engagement, or generic discussion.

Examples

Framework selection: compare official support, compatibility, maintenance, local fit, and a representative prototype; state which constraint decides the recommendation.

Model benchmark: preserve dataset splits, hardware, seeds, metric definitions, uncertainty, and domain limitations; report dimensions separately.

Sources

See ../../sources/research-topic.sources.md.

For academic manuscripts, read references/research-paper-standard.md.