| name | autonomous-investigation |
| description | The protocol behind every investigation skill. Use when AI research must proceed without you: search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, confidence stacking, diffable outputs. |
| intent | Provide the canonical contract for autonomous research skills: a bounded question budget, a search-plan gate, three-level evidence labeling, do-not-invent lists, just-enough output, stable diffable schemas, and confidence stacking โ so investigations are trustworthy, schedulable, and comparable run over run. |
| type | workflow |
| theme | market-intelligence |
| best_for | ["Defining consistent behavior for research skills that run as agent tasks or on schedules","Keeping AI research honest: labeled evidence, real citations, no invented facts","Making run N and run N+1 diffable so delta monitoring is possible"] |
| scenarios | ["Set up a competitive scan that can re-run quarterly without me babysitting it","I want research output where I can tell facts from the AI's guesses"] |
| estimated_time | protocol reference; investigations vary (15-45 min per run) |
Autonomous Investigation Protocol
Purpose
Provide the canonical contract for investigation skills โ research the AI performs in the world (web
search, published data, public filings) while you review the evidence instead of feeding it context.
Where workshop-facilitation governs skills that ask you questions one at a time, this protocol governs
skills that proceed without you: they budget their questions, show their plan, label every claim, and
produce output stable enough to diff against last quarter's run. That last property is the payoff โ an
investigation honoring this contract can run as an agent task, in a loop, or on a schedule.
Input
Nothing required โ this skill defines the protocol other investigation skills follow.
Also useful when invoked standalone: the target of the investigation and, above all, the decision
the research should support. Research without a decision is a hobby; every investigation skill asks
for the decision because it determines what "just enough" means.
Anything supplied with the invocation itself โ text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an
appended ARGUMENTS: line โ counts as answers already given. Use it, credit it against the question
budget, and don't re-ask.
Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The protocol's whole design is to proceed on best-available
evidence with labeled assumptions when nobody answers questions. When another skill references this
protocol, that skill's Input section governs what to provide.
Example invocation: Run an autonomous investigation on [TARGET]'s move into workflow automation โ this supports our Q3 roadmap bet on the same space.
Key Concepts
Two protocols, two jobs
| workshop-facilitation | autonomous-investigation |
|---|
| Who holds the context | The user | The world (public sources) |
| Interaction shape | One question per turn | Question budget, then proceed |
| Blocked by silence? | Yes โ waits for answers | No โ labels assumptions and continues |
| Schedulable? | No | Yes โ that's the point |
The contract
Every investigation skill honors all seven clauses. They are not a menu.
-
Question budget โ a hard cap (usually 3) on clarifying questions. When the budget is spent or
nobody answers, proceed with labeled assumptions. This is what makes investigations schedulable:
an unattended run degrades gracefully instead of stalling.
