study-design-tool-gate

name	study-design-tool-gate
description	Classify a paper's study design (RCT, cohort, case-control, diagnostic-accuracy, systematic-review, animal-study, prediction-model, etc., or not_applicable) and dispatch to the correct downstream bias-risk/quality/reporting tool and specific variant (CASP has 8 variants, JBI ~6, RoB2 has parallel/cluster/crossover versions). Use this as the mandatory first step before running ANY of CASP, JBI, AMSTAR-2, NOS, RoB2, ROBINS-I, QUADAS-2, CONSORT, STROBE, ARRIVE, SPIRIT, TRIPOD, or engineering-config-grading — these tools are all study-design-conditional and picking the wrong variant produces meaningless results. It is entirely correct and common for this gate to determine that none of these medically-descended tools applies (e.g. most CS/ML papers) — that is a valid, complete answer, not a failure.
version	1.0.0
category	paper-reading
type	sop
execution	subagent
prompt	./prompt.md
input	source_path (string), meta_path (string)
reads	abstract and method sections only
output	study_design (string), dispatched_tool (string), applicability_reasoning (string)
dependencies	{"sops":["spawn-agent"]}

Study Design Tool Gate

Classifies study design and dispatches to the right bias-risk/quality/reporting tool + variant — or determines none applies. Added per coverage-audit M11: the original graph had no node representing this dispatch decision at all; every A1/A2 tool was drawn as if it started with no gate.

Execution

Subagent — spawned via spawn-agent skill.

Reference

references/tool-dispatch-table.md — the full dispatch table (every study_design → tool + variant mapping). Read before drafting the prompt's decision, not summarized inline here (kept out of this SKILL.md body per Progressive Disclosure).

"not_applicable" Is a Correct, Common Answer

This is worth restating: most of these tools carry medical/clinical assumptions baked into their domains, and forcing a dispatch onto a paper that has no matching study design produces a meaningless result, not a conservative one. Do not treat a high not_applicable rate across a batch of CS/ML papers as a sign this SOP is failing to trigger correctly.

Available SOPs

SOP	When to use
spawn-agent	Spawn a customized CC subagent with full MCP tool access.