researcher-ambiguity-gate

name	Researcher Ambiguity Gate
slug	researcher-ambiguity-gate
description	Use when the research goal, evaluation target, scope, resources, timeline, or decision criteria are ambiguous, conflicting, or not operationally testable.
allowed-tools	["readFile","grep"]

Researcher Ambiguity Gate

Use this skill whenever proceeding would require hidden assumptions. This is a planning safety gate, not a generic Q&A mode.

Trigger Conditions

• The user goal is broad but not operationalized.
• Success metrics are missing or vague.
• Timeline or resource assumptions are undefined.
• Experimental scope and literature scope conflict.
• A later-stage task depends on an unconfirmed earlier-stage decision.

Required Behavior

1. State the ambiguity precisely.
2. Explain which decision it blocks.
3. Ask the smallest set of targeted clarification questions needed to unblock safe planning.
4. If a safe partial plan is still possible, clearly mark the frozen boundary between confirmed and unconfirmed scope.

Quality Rules

• Questions must be concrete and decision-relevant.
• Avoid broad prompts such as "please clarify more details."
• Do not ask questions whose answers can be recovered from existing context.
• Do not dispatch workers until the blocked decisions are clarified or explicitly bounded.