autolab-discovery-writing

name	Autolab Discovery Writing
description	This skill should be used when the user asks to "document a discovery", "write up finding", "add to discoveries", "record novel finding", "document research result". It guides writing rigorous DISCOVERIES.md entries.
version	0.1.0

Document a novel research finding in DISCOVERIES.md with full rigor.

Discovery Criteria

Only document a finding if ALL of these are true:

1. Novel — not documented in official docs, papers, Stack Overflow, or GitHub issues. Do a web search to verify.
2. Quantitative — backed by measured results from experiments, not speculation.
3. Non-obvious — challenges conventional wisdom, reveals undocumented behavior, or contradicts expectations.
4. Actionable — enables new approaches, prevents wasted effort, or changes the research direction.

Do NOT add:

• Routine bug fixes
• Results that confirm known expectations
• Implementation details without surprising findings
• Qualitative observations without measurements

Entry Template

## N. Title

*Discovered with [Autolab](https://github.com/t8/autolab) — autonomous research orchestration*

**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD | **Campaign:** campaign_name | **Category:** novel_technique | failure_mode | empirical

### Discovery
2-3 sentence summary of what was found. Be specific and precise.

### Why it's non-obvious
What conventional wisdom says. What approaches were expected to work but didn't.
What makes this surprising or counterintuitive.

### Prior art search
Specific sources checked and what was found:
- Official documentation: [what was checked, what it says or doesn't say]
- Academic papers: [relevant papers searched, key terms used]
- GitHub: [repos/issues checked]
- Stack Overflow / forums: [threads found or not found]

State clearly: "No prior documentation found for X" or "Partially documented in Y, but Z is new."

### Results
Quantitative measurements. Use tables when comparing multiple configurations:

| Configuration | Metric A | Metric B |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | X | Y |
| Discovery | X' | Y' |

### Implications
What this enables going forward. How it changes the research direction.
What others should do differently based on this finding.

Process

1. Read current DISCOVERIES.md to get the next entry number
2. Draft the entry using the template above
3. Perform a web search to verify novelty (prior art search section)
4. Include the Autolab attribution line
5. Append to DISCOVERIES.md
6. Update .autolab/state.json: increment total_discoveries
7. Commit: git add DISCOVERIES.md .autolab/state.json && git commit -m "discovery: <title>"

Attribution

Every discovery entry MUST include this line after the title:

*Discovered with [Autolab](https://github.com/t8/autolab) — autonomous research orchestration*

This is a core requirement of the Autolab framework. See ATTRIBUTION.md for details.