| name | evidence-research |
| description | Persists rigorous internal or external evidence for one decision. Use when design, planning, retrospectives, or architecture depends on sourced research before deciding. |
Evidence Research
Use this for one decision whose evidence must be gathered, checked, synthesized, and persisted before acting. Use ordinary lookup when only a few facts, examples, or links are needed.
Steps
- Announce the skill selection and why. This announces routing, not that research is already underway.
- State one decision in a plain sentence. Name one to three reversing constraints: facts or constraints that would materially narrow or reverse it.
- Treat every proposed mechanism as a hypothesis. Record the evidence that would falsify it.
- Choose a source mode and research depth.
- Load RESEARCH-RIGOR.md. Resolve the absolute project root and OS temporary directory, create the research directories and
brief.md, and record concrete expected report paths before claiming research is underway.
- Assign source areas and gather evidence under the rigor rules.
- Apply the report gate. Synthesis begins only after every expected report passes it.
- Write
synthesis.md when the chosen depth requires it, including when the result is inconclusive. For targeted research, write it only when the reports contain substantive decision evidence.
- Apply the synthesis gate whenever
synthesis.md is written, then return findings and decision pressure before artifact paths. Include one next grilling question only when an active grilling session has a genuinely unresolved branch.
Send interim updates only when evidence changes the decision pressure or a blocker prevents completion.
Keep the project repository unchanged. Store research artifacts under the OS temporary directory, such as $TMPDIR on macOS/Linux or %TEMP% on Windows. If subagents are unavailable, state that and run the local fallback defined by the rigor rules.
Source Modes
ecosystem: external systems, libraries, products, docs, public precedent, and technical writing.internal: repository history, Codex sessions, PRs, issues, ADRs, local docs, and project-specific evidence.mixed: internal evidence plus external precedent.
Default to ecosystem when the user asks how others solve a problem, compares products or libraries, or requests ecosystem precedent. Default to internal for retrospectives, session analysis, project history, or repo-local patterns. Use mixed when both source families could change the decision.
Research Depth
Default to standard. Scale depth with the decision's breadth, irreversibility, stakes, and cost of a wrong answer. Honor explicit requests for targeted, standard, ambitious, quick, or deep research.
targeted: one narrow source area, at least 5 authoritative sources, synthesis optional.standard: one focused source area by default, at least 8 authoritative sources total, synthesis required. Add source areas only when they are independent and could change the decision.ambitious: broad or hard-to-reverse work, 4 or more decision-relevant source areas, at least 20 authoritative sources total, synthesis required, and an explicit evidence-versus-inference table.
A focused, reversible public API question can remain targeted or standard. Use ambitious when API breadth, migration cost, security, data-model impact, pricing, irreversible architecture, or conflict makes reversal expensive.
If the user says the first pass was too shallow, upgrade to ambitious, add missing source areas, and strengthen the completion checks.
Artifact Layout
<os-temp-dir>/evidence-research/<project>/<topic>/
+-- brief.md
+-- sources/
+-- reports/
+-- synthesis.md
Write these fields in brief.md:
- project or context name and absolute
project_root
- the one decision being researched
- one to three reversing constraints
- relevant conversation history, user concerns, and resolved decisions
- unresolved branches and research questions
- mechanism hypotheses and their falsifiers
- source mode and depth
- source-area matrix, source priorities, and minimum source bar
- concrete expected report paths
Use absolute project file paths in briefs, reports, synthesis, and subagent prompts.
RESEARCH-RIGOR.md is the single source of truth for source-area assignment, subagent prompts, report requirements, source quality, finding verdicts, and completion checks. Apply every relevant rule before accepting a report or synthesis.
Synthesis
Keep synthesis.md concise and decision-oriented:
- consensus patterns and meaningful disagreements
- applicability to this project
- risks and trade-offs
- evidence separated from inference
- source-area coverage and gaps
- decision-changing evidence separated from background context
- recommended decision wording
- source links
Use the finding-verdict shape from RESEARCH-RIGOR.md for every major claim. Return ADR-worthy trade-offs to the active caller; this skill does not write project ADRs.
Output
Findings:
- ...
Decision pressure:
- ...
Research artifacts:
- Brief: <os-temp-dir>/evidence-research/<project>/<topic>/brief.md
- Synthesis: <os-temp-dir>/evidence-research/<project>/<topic>/synthesis.md
Next grilling question:
...
Omit the synthesis path when no synthesis was required. Omit the next grilling question outside an active grilling session or when no unresolved branch remains.
