Use before subagent dispatch, before editing code that changes a struct, function signature, or API contract, or after a tool response contradicts the plan. Appends friction (F-N) and wins (W-N) to the project's session-log tracker.
Designing test suites, coverage gaps, flaky tests, asserting correctness
Use when asked to run a tracker hygiene sweep, audit tracker staleness or drift, clean up docs/trackers, before backlog triage or any "what's open?" report, or when the SessionStart banner says a tracker hygiene sweep is overdue. Interactive — every finding is human-gated; approved fixes apply via the librarian; each sweep appends to the project's tracker-hygiene-log.
Auditing codescout tool-call usage — inefficient tool patterns, recurring frictions, hookify candidates
Improving a prompt — critique, drafting from scratch, diagnosing model misbehavior, or coaching toward eval-driven iteration
Use when the user runs /research-subagent or asks for deep research, a full report, or research where the main context should not absorb raw search results — including mapping a broad subject across multiple angles (fan-out). Spawns one or more general-purpose subagents that call the researcher MCP and return only synthesized findings. Prefer /research-web for quick inline lookups.
Use when the user runs /research-web or asks for web research on a topic, person, company, library, market, or jobs and wants results inline in the current conversation. Calls the researcher MCP directly; results land in main context. Prefer /research-subagent if context is precious or the user asked for a deep/report mode search.
Reference guide for /research-web and /research-subagent — do not invoke directly. Provides the tool-selection matrix, mode guide, context budgets, and the shared research brief template used when calling the researcher MCP server.