research-synthesis

name	research-synthesis
description	Evidence-first research synthesis workflow for market research, industry analysis, competitive research, policy or company information synthesis, file-only or file-augmented analysis, technical architecture reviews, risk assessment, and report-ready conclusions. Use when the user asks for comprehensive, cross-verified research or deep summarization rather than a simple lookup.
keywords	["research","synthesis","summary","summarization","report","market","industry","competitor","policy","company","evidence","sources","deep-research","cross-verification","source-backed","market-research","industry-analysis","competitive-research","policy-analysis","company-research","risk-assessment","technical-research","file-analysis","multi-agent","parallel-research","深度总结","总结","研究","行业研究","行业分析","市场研究","竞品分析","政策分析","公司研究","资料综述","报告","证据","来源","交叉验证","多智能体","并行研究"]
metadata	{"short-description":"Evidence-first research synthesis"}

Research Synthesis

Use this skill for substantial research where the answer must be grounded in real files, logs, sources, or current external evidence. Do not use it for simple factual lookup, one-source Q&A, or ordinary code changes.

Hard Rules

• Inspect the real provided files, logs, repo paths, or source artifacts before explaining behavior or generating conclusions.
• Save every research artifact under research/, relative to the current working/artifact root; create the directory before writing.
• In officev3 session-output mode, the current working directory is already the artifact root whose host path ends in output/. Never prepend another output/ segment (for example, do not use $(pwd)/output/research).
• Never save research artifacts directly in the current working/artifact root.
• Avoid CLI-specific assumptions. Use only tools actually available in the current host runtime.
• Use native subagents only when the user explicitly asks for multi-agent, parallel-agent, or delegation work, or when the host runtime has clearly authorized subagent use for the task.
• When subagents are authorized, use multiple subagents for independent facets or dimensions instead of defaulting to a single delegated worker.
• If subagents are not authorized or unavailable, run the same workflow locally in sequential rounds with a smaller but explicit evidence budget.
• For file-only requests, do not perform external search.
• For current or time-sensitive claims, check the current date/time before analysis and make search windows explicit.
• Match the user's search language unless the task requires a specific locale.
• Search depth comes from covering distinct evidence gaps, not from rephrasing a query that already returned usable evidence. Before every later batch, name the still-uncovered dimension or conflict; do not rerun a near-equivalent entity/fact query merely because an authority-ranked or site: query was empty.
• If an exact public URL is already known, read it with an actually available browser tool. In officev3, standalone Playwright MCP tools are separate from the read-only browser gateway: do not request source_preference: playwright on the gateway as a substitute; use the standalone tools, or gateway auto / browser_connector for real-browser reads.
• Use standard Markdown footnotes in research artifacts: [^id] inline plus [^id]: Title. Date. URL definitions.

Start

1. Treat the current working directory as {workspace} and the artifact root.
2. Resolve {skill_dir} to the active installed directory containing this SKILL.md. Do not assume the current working directory is the skill directory.
3. Create research/ directly under that root.
4. Pick a stable topic slug:
   • Prefer short ASCII, lowercase, hyphenated words.
   • If the topic is mostly non-ASCII or ambiguous, use research-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.
5. State the selected route and one-sentence rationale before researching.
6. Follow the route details in routes.md.

Routing

Signal	Route
Files plus "only based on files", "no search", or equivalent	C: File-only
Files plus "refer to", "combine with", or no explicit restriction	D: File-augmented
No files plus broad landscape question	A: Wide search
No files plus specific bounded question	B: Focused search

When unclear, prefer Route D over Route C for file tasks, and Route A over Route B for broad multi-faceted topics. If that would conflict with an explicit user constraint, honor the constraint.

Subagent Policy

This skill supports multi-agent research but does not require it.

When subagents are authorized:

• Dispatch multiple bounded, independent research tasks using the host's native subagent tool. Prefer one subagent per facet, dimension, or validation conflict when those tasks can write separate artifacts.
• Default to up to 8 concurrent subagents per round unless the host states a different limit. For larger decompositions, launch additional bounded rounds.
• Give each agent the mission, context, allowed/disallowed sources, exact output format, and exact output path.
• Do not assume subagents inherit main-agent context; pass paths or excerpts.
• Do not launch duplicate agents on the same question.
• Do not let two subagents write the same artifact path; merge or synthesize in the main agent after their outputs are complete.

When subagents are not authorized or unavailable:

• Execute dimensions sequentially in the main agent.
• Preserve the same artifact names and citation contract.
• Reduce search counts pragmatically and record the reduced budget in {topic}_cross_verification.md.

Use prompts.md for subagent/local-round templates.

Required Outputs

All files live under research/, relative to the current working/artifact root.

File	Route	Purpose
{topic}_file_analysis.md	C, D	File inventory, extraction, cross-file mapping
{topic}_wideNN.md	A	Wide exploration facets
{topic}_dimNN.md	A, B, C, D	Dimension-specific evidence
{topic}_validationNN.md	Optional	Conflict-specific validation output before merge
{topic}_cross_verification.md	A, B, C, D	Confidence tiers and conflict zones
{topic}_insight.md	A, B, C, D	Cross-dimension insights
{topic}_final.md	Optional	Final Markdown report when no writing skill is available

Before final handoff, run:

RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR="${BOX_AGENT_RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR:-${RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR:-{skill_dir}}}"
if [ ! -f "$RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR/scripts/validate_research_artifacts.py" ] && [ -f "$HOME/.box-agent/skills/research-synthesis/scripts/validate_research_artifacts.py" ]; then
  RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR="$HOME/.box-agent/skills/research-synthesis"
fi
if [ ! -f "$RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR/scripts/validate_research_artifacts.py" ] && [ -f "$HOME/.box-agent/skills/deep-research-swarm-officev3/scripts/validate_research_artifacts.py" ]; then
  RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR="$HOME/.box-agent/skills/deep-research-swarm-officev3"
fi
if [ ! -f "$RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR/scripts/validate_research_artifacts.py" ]; then
  echo "ERROR: validate_research_artifacts.py not found under $RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR/scripts" >&2
  exit 1
fi
${BOX_AGENT_PYTHON:-python3} "$RESEARCH_SYNTHESIS_SKILL_DIR/scripts/validate_research_artifacts.py" --research-dir "research" --topic "{topic}" --route A --report "research/qa/{topic}_research_check.json"

Adjust --route for the selected route. Add --min-dimensions N when the dimension count differs from the default. For a sequential reduced-budget run, keep at least three distinct dimensions and record the actual budget in the cross-verification file; the downstream presentation checkpoint requires this fresh successful JSON report before outline authoring.

Final Handoff

If a report-writing, paper-writing, document, or presentation skill is available and the user requested that output type, hand off explicit file paths and state that research is complete. Otherwise, produce {topic}_final.md from the verified research artifacts.

For technical product or codebase research tasks:

• Preserve product/runtime ownership boundaries in the synthesis when relevant.
• Distinguish UI assumptions from runtime evidence.
• Call out whether a finding is source-tree evidence, runtime-bundled evidence, log evidence, user-file evidence, or external-source evidence.
• Keep recommendations narrow and reversible unless the user asked for broader strategy.