research-stage

name

research-stage

description

Produce the just-in-time five-item stage package for an artifact-driven research program: canonical stage prompt, repository installation task, attachment manifest, fresh-session launch message, and post-stage validation task with recommended commit message. Use when commissioning a stage, generating a research prompt, building an attachment list, launching a fresh session, or running /research-stage. Does not execute the substantive stage itself in the packaging session.

Research Stage Package

Generate a complete just-in-time stage package. Do not execute the substantive research, synthesis, review, or revision in this session unless the human explicitly commissions that stage and provides the full attachment set for a fresh-session role—and even then, prefer packaging first.

Read first

1. AGENTS.md
2. research-program.toml (stage id, depends_on, outputs, identifier ranges)
3. Accepted Blueprint + Charter
4. program/contracts/handoffs.md
5. program/templates/stage-package.md
6. Relevant artifact contract under program/contracts/
7. Relevant template under program/templates/

Five required deliverables

1. Canonical stage prompt — self-contained; all sections from the matching contract (e.g. focused research prompt contract).
2. Repository installation task — destination path under docs/prompts/; do not mix prompt install with report execution.
3. Attachment manifest — template program/templates/attachment-manifest.md; store under docs/handoffs/<stage-id>-attachment-manifest.md when installing.
4. Fresh-session launch message — program/templates/launch-message.md.
5. Validation task + recommended commit message — program/templates/validation-task.md; commit patterns in program/reference/commit-boundaries.md.

Attachment selection rules

Include:

1. Governing artifacts in full (Blueprint, Charter as applicable)
2. Current stage prompt in full
3. Direct prerequisite reports in full
4. Accepted Decision Records
5. Handoff Digests for indirect reports
6. Full indirect reports when nuance, weak evidence, or conflict is material

Synthesis and adversarial review should get all materially relevant full reports unless reliable repo retrieval is available.

Just-in-time rules

• Independent research prompts may be generated together after Blueprint + Charter acceptance.
• Dependent, reconciliation, synthesis, review, revision, and implementation planning prompts only after prerequisites are accepted.
• Inherit actual upstream recommendations, IDs, weak evidence, contradictions, open questions, risks, spike results, handoff requirements.
• Allocate non-overlapping identifier ranges declared in Blueprint/manifest.

Focused research tracks

This template does not pre-create track files. Create:

docs/prompts/NN-<focus>-research-prompt.md
docs/reports/NN-<focus>-research-report.md

and add [[stages]] to research-program.toml. Use program/templates/focused-research-prompt.md.

Output behavior

• Prefer writing package artifacts to reserved paths when asked to install.
• Do not mark stages accepted.
• Do not begin a downstream substantive stage.
• Do not invent project decisions absent from approved discovery/Blueprint.