| name | autoresearch-goal |
| category | research |
| status | active |
| description | Durable professor-critic research workflow bound to a tracked goal, with validation-gated completion. Use when a research mission needs ongoing goal-focused management plus professor/critic-style validation. |
| agent_created | true |
| triggers | ["autoresearch-goal","research goal","professor critic research","validated research mission"] |
Ported from oh-my-codex autoresearch-goal. OMX runtime conventions ($macro invocation, omx CLI, .omx/ state directory) are replaced with WorkBuddy idioms (Skill tool, Agent tool, task list, .workbuddy/memory).
Autoresearch Goal
Use this workflow when a research mission should be bound to a tracked goal while WorkBuddy remains the durable state owner. This is for research projects that need goal-focused management plus professor/critic-style validation; it is not the default answer for ordinary pre-planning best-practice lookup.
Boundary
- Do not claim shell commands mutate hidden external goal state — WorkBuddy tracks the goal locally.
- Do not edit upstream tooling or add dependencies to satisfy a goal lifecycle.
- Track goal status with the task list (TaskCreate/TaskUpdate) and persist durable artifacts under
.omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/.
- Treat the goal as "complete" only via the local completion gate below, not via an external tool's hidden state.
Artifacts
autoresearch-goal writes:
.omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/mission.json
.omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/rubric.md
.omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/ledger.jsonl
.omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/completion.json
Flow
- Create the mission and professor-critic rubric. Capture in
.omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/mission.json and rubric.md (topic, rubric, and the critic command/prompt).
- Emit the model-facing handoff: summarize the mission + rubric so the active session has a clear objective.
- Track the goal with the task list; mark it active as the intended objective.
- Research iteratively against the rubric. Record every critic outcome in
.omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/ledger.jsonl via the verdict command (verdict pass|fail|blocked + evidence).
- Completion is blocked until professor-critic validation records
verdict=pass. After the mission audit passes, mark the task-list goal complete and record .omw/autoresearch-goal/<slug>/completion.json with the matching goal snapshot.
- Treat the completion step as durable local state reconciliation; do not mutate external goal state through shell commands or hooks.
- After completion, clear the active goal in the task list before starting another same-session goal.
Completion gate
A passing professor-critic artifact and a matching completed goal snapshot (task-list status complete) are required. Assistant prose, partial tests, or a failed/blocked verdict are not sufficient.
Lifecycle: the task-list goal starts active when the mission is created, and is marked complete after the professor-critic and audit pass. Local artifacts reconcile snapshots and record the cleanup step; they must not mutate hidden external goal state.