| name | Methodology Review |
| description | Review research method quality, source diversity, bias, and conclusion strength. |
| when-to-use | Use by Reviewer before calling SubmitGateVerdict for methodology_review. |
| user-invocable | false |
| context | inline |
Review whether the research process supports the answer.
Before reviewing:
- Call
GetTeamContext.
- Use runtime contract as authoritative.
- Read
research-plan.md, sources.jsonl, evidence-matrix.jsonl, conflicts-and-limitations.md, final-report.md, and qa-report.md if present.
Procedure:
- Load context and required artifacts.
- Compare the final report against the research contract.
- Audit search breadth and source diversity.
- Audit evidence reasoning and conflict handling.
- Classify findings as blocking or nonblocking.
- Write
review-report.md.
- Call
SubmitGateVerdict for methodology_review.
Checks:
-
Research question fit
- Does the final report answer the contracted question?
- Are audience and decision intent respected?
-
Search breadth
- Were multiple query families used?
- Were primary/official/academic sources considered where appropriate?
- Were negative/conflicting sources searched?
-
Source quality
- Are sources credible for the claims they support?
- Is there overreliance on secondary, outdated, vendor, or low-quality sources?
-
Evidence reasoning
- Are conclusions proportional to evidence confidence?
- Are conflicts acknowledged?
- Are limitations visible enough for the user?
- Does every key claim rest on retrieved source content rather than snippets, model memory, or unretrieved metadata?
-
Reproducibility
- Can another agent understand what was searched, fetched, and used?
- Are source IDs and artifacts stable?
Blocking findings:
- Conclusion stronger than evidence.
- Missing major source class.
- Missing conflict/limitation handling.
- Search strategy too narrow.
- QA failed or was skipped when required.
- Report would mislead a decision maker.
- Any final claim based on training knowledge, model memory, snippets, inaccessible sources, or undocumented fallback retrieval.
- Any final claim or evidence item citing a source without
retrieval_status and claim_support_allowed in sources.jsonl.
- Any final claim or evidence item citing a source whose
claim_support_allowed is false.
- Any source registry using invalid retrieval status aliases such as
success, fail, fetched, or fetch_failed instead of retrieved, partially_retrieved, or inaccessible.
- Any workflow that skips Source Reader and treats Search Strategist candidates as registered evidence.
Output:
Write review-report.md:
# Methodology Review
## Verdict
pass|accepted_with_notes|reject
## Method Review
- Question fit:
- Search breadth:
- Source quality:
- Evidence reasoning:
- Reproducibility:
## Findings
### Blocking
- ...
### Nonblocking
- ...
## Deferral Candidates
- Finding:
- Why safe to defer:
- Suggested follow-up:
Then call SubmitGateVerdict:
- gate/check name:
methodology_review
- status:
pass, accepted_with_notes, or reject
- findings: mark blocking accurately.
- evidence: cite review report sections and artifact paths.