ed-discovery

name	ed-discovery
description	Discover useful tools, concepts, or mental models that apply to real work problems. Like a well-read friend giving you a practical insight. Triggers on: discovery, discover, explore new, new tool, bizu, descoberta.
user-invocable	true

Discovery — Practical Insight

Use this skill for open-ended exploration that should bring back something useful: a tool, concept, mental model, pattern from another industry, cultural idea, historical analogy, or emerging technique.

Unlike ed-research, the target does not need to be known in advance. The value is finding something the agent/operator would not naturally search for, then making its practical relevance clear.

Arguments

• No argument: explore freely and bring back something useful.
• With direction: explore in that direction while keeping room for adjacent discoveries.

Boundary

Do not manage lifecycle, publication, postflight, or generic artifact rites inside this skill.

What Counts As A Discovery

A good discovery has practical application, not just novelty.

Examples:

• Tool: "prompt tuning by hand can become an optimization loop with DSPy."
• Concept: "Andon cord maps to fail-fast pipeline interruption."
• Industry pattern: "aviation checklists clarify handoff risk in agent processes."
• Cultural concept: "genchi genbutsu means go see the real system, not the proxy."

Not enough: "this is interesting." The discovery must answer: what changes because we know this?

Method

1. Choose A Starting Direction

Start from one of:

• current work friction;
• a vague operator signal;
• a surprising thread in prior research;
• a nearby field;
• a tool ecosystem;
• an analogy from another discipline;
• pure curiosity when no stronger signal exists.

2. Explore Broadly

Search across sources appropriate to the direction:

• tool ecosystems and repositories;
• HN, technical blogs, docs, papers, and public discussions;
• other industries such as manufacturing, aviation, medicine, education, operations;
• history, philosophy, language, and cultural concepts.

The source itself can be the discovery if it reveals a reusable idea.

3. Understand The Discovery

For tools, capture:

• what it does;
• how it works;
• how to get started;
• cost and operating constraints;
• limitations and failure modes.

For concepts or patterns, capture:

• original context;
• core mechanism;
• why it mattered there;
• where the analogy does and does not transfer.

4. Contextualize To Work

This is the central requirement.

Explain concretely:

• which project or work stream it affects;
• what current friction it addresses;
• how things work now;
• how they would work with the discovery;
• what first practical step would test it;
• what risk would make the analogy fail.

Quality Criteria

• The application to work must be specific enough to act on.
• Include a before/after comparison for the main application.
• Explain the concept plainly before using it as advice.
• Distinguish useful analogy from overreach.
• Prefer one strong discovery over a list of loosely related curiosities.
• Keep sources traceable.

Output Contract

Produce a discovery artifact suitable for the uniform report pipeline.

Recommended sections:

1. The Problem Or Friction
2. The Discovery
3. Original Context
4. Application To Work
5. Before And After
6. Getting Started
7. Risks And Limits
8. References

Privacy Rule

For external posts or public communication, do not identify private organizations, owners, project names, or data that can trace the human operator.