research-wayfinder

name	research-wayfinder
description	Plan a research project as a decision map that outlives any single session — a destination (a defensible, pre-registerable design) reached by resolving decision tickets of four kinds, one at a time. Adapted for research from Matt Pocock's wayfinder. The map lives in the repo as markdown; each session claims one frontier ticket; literature sweeps run as parallel research tickets; the resolved map compiles into a pre-analysis plan. Use at the start of a project, when a design has more open decisions than one conversation can hold, or when planning keeps restarting from scratch each session. Not for executing analyses or writing the paper.
argument-hint	[describe the research idea or project to chart, or name the ticket to work]
allowed-tools	["Read","Write","Edit","Bash","AskUserQuestion"]

Research Wayfinder

Heritage and scope

Adapted from Matt Pocock's wayfinder (MIT, mattpocock/skills; see RECOMMENDED.md). His insight carries over whole: give up on the session as the unit of work. The map lives in the repository, any future session picks it up, and the context window stops being the source of truth. What changes here is the destination and the ticket taxonomy. Wayfinder charts a route to a shippable spec. Research-wayfinder charts a route to a defensible, pre-registerable research design, and its decisions are the ones experimental methodology actually forces: estimand before estimator, theory before if-then, power before fielding.