| name | autoresearch |
| description | Use when starting or resuming an autoresearch project — reads research/STATE.md to find the current stage of the pipeline (topics → db → validator → run), verifies the previous stage's gate artifacts exist on disk, and routes to the matching stage skill. Triggers on "start autoresearch", "resume autoresearch", "autoresearch status", "what stage is my research project at". |
Autoresearch (dispatcher)
Pipeline: autoresearch-topics → autoresearch-db
→ autoresearch-validator → autoresearch-run. State lives in
<project>/research/STATE.md (schema and template:
skills/autoresearch/references/state-schema.md).
Procedure
- Locate state. Read
<project>/research/STATE.md.
- Missing → new project: create
research/STATE.md from the template
in references/state-schema.md (stage topics), then invoke
autoresearch-topics.
- Corrupt/unreadable → re-derive the stage from the artifact table
below (earliest stage whose required artifacts are missing), show the
user the derived state, and confirm with them before overwriting
STATE.md. Never overwrite a readable STATE.md.
- Verify, don't trust. Check the artifacts the recorded stage implies.
If any are missing, drop back to the earliest stage whose artifacts are
missing and tell the user what was expected and not found.
- Report and route. Summarize in a few sentences: stage, gates passed,
attempts completed, authorized rounds remaining. Then invoke the stage
skill.
stage | required artifacts before entering | route to |
|---|
| topics | — | autoresearch-topics |
| db | topics.md with ≥1 chosen topic, each with a ### Metrics block | autoresearch-db |
| validator | survey gate passed: research/CATALOG.md, .knowledge/INDEX.md, research/INSIGHTS.md with a user-selected section | autoresearch-validator |
| run | validator gate passed: research/validator/manifest.json recording self-test results | autoresearch-run |
| done | final report exists in docs/discussion/ | report status only |
Gates are never skipped on request without appending the deviation to
overrides: in STATE.md (see schema).
