research

name	research
description	Web research, multi-AI delegation, and multi-perspective validation. /research [query], /research delegate [task]. Use when: "search for", "look up", "research", "delegate", "get perspectives", "web search", "find out", "investigate", "introspect", "check readwise", "saved articles", "reading list", "what are people saying", "X search", "trending", "which model", "compare models", "best model for", "model selection". Trigger: /research.
argument-hint	[query|web-search|web-deep|web-news|web-docs|delegate|introspect|readwise|xai|exemplars] [args]

/research

Evidence-backed research. The lead owns framing, source weighting, synthesis, and residual uncertainty.

/research routes by capability, not vendor. Exa, xAI, Brave, Perplexity, Context7, Tavily, Firecrawl, browser agents, and provider lanes are acquisition tools behind a small set of evidence jobs: repo truth, docs lookup, web retrieval, code/context examples, extraction, social/discourse, recency verification, and synthesis.

Route

Need	Load
broad research, comparison, architecture prior art, or discourse scan	references/default-fanout.md
web-search, web-deep, web-news, web-docs	references/web-search.md
Exa search/fetch/deep/MCP/code context	references/exa-tools.md
extraction, site maps, crawls	references/extraction-tools.md
delegate	references/delegate.md
introspect	references/introspect.md
readwise	references/readwise.md
xai	references/xai-search.md
exemplars	references/exemplars.md

If the user names a sub-capability, load that reference. Otherwise use the default fanout for substantive research; narrow to one source only for explicit single-source requests or simple fact/version lookups.

Model selection/comparison is research, not memory: model facts rot in weeks. Start from primitives/skills/peer-harnesses/references/model-provider-harness-index.md for current local facts, then verify against live sources — availability on the target platform, pricing, context, tool-calling support — and return a ranked recommendation with dates on every claim.

Contract

• Read the live repo first for repo facts; use current external sources for drift-prone facts.
• Prefer acquisition surfaces in this order when available: MCP tool, local CLI wrapper, direct REST/API, built-in WebSearch last.
• Retrieval and synthesis are distinct jobs: source URLs/files/receipts are the proof, your synthesis is the conclusion. Cite the source for every claim; a summary never stands in for it.
• Label skipped, failed, stale, in-flight, and partial sources; report residual uncertainty rather than smoothing over gaps.

Delegation Judgment

Delegate per the Shared Operating Spine (Act). A lane earns its spend only by carrying distinct sources, methods, or model families.

Completion Gate

See primitives/shared/AGENTS.md (Prove) for the shared core. /research adds:

• Sources/tools queried and why.
• Provider lanes, receipt ids, accepted/rejected outputs, and failures.
• Source coverage gaps, stale facts, and skipped tools.

Gotchas

• A single WebSearch is a lookup, not substantive research.
• Mandatory source structure belongs in references/default-fanout.md; keep vendor command recipes in tool references.