autonomous-investigation

name	autonomous-investigation
description	The protocol behind every investigation skill. Use when AI research must proceed without you: search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, confidence stacking, diffable outputs.
intent	Provide the canonical contract for autonomous research skills: a bounded question budget, a search-plan gate, three-level evidence labeling, do-not-invent lists, just-enough output, stable diffable schemas, and confidence stacking — so investigations are trustworthy, schedulable, and comparable run over run.
type	workflow
theme	market-intelligence
best_for	["Defining consistent behavior for research skills that run as agent tasks or on schedules","Keeping AI research honest: labeled evidence, real citations, no invented facts","Making run N and run N+1 diffable so delta monitoring is possible"]
scenarios	["Set up a competitive scan that can re-run quarterly without me babysitting it","I want research output where I can tell facts from the AI's guesses"]
estimated_time	protocol reference; investigations vary (15-45 min per run)

Autonomous Investigation Protocol

Purpose

Provide the canonical contract for investigation skills — research the AI performs in the world (web search, published data, public filings) while you review the evidence instead of feeding it context. Where workshop-facilitation governs skills that ask you questions one at a time, this protocol governs skills that proceed without you: they budget their questions, show their plan, label every claim, and produce output stable enough to diff against last quarter's run. That last property is the payoff — an investigation honoring this contract can run as an agent task, in a loop, or on a schedule.

Input

Nothing required — this skill defines the protocol other investigation skills follow. Also useful when invoked standalone: the target of the investigation and, above all, the decision the research should support. Research without a decision is a hobby; every investigation skill asks for the decision because it determines what "just enough" means.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it, credit it against the question budget, and don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The protocol's whole design is to proceed on best-available evidence with labeled assumptions when nobody answers questions. When another skill references this protocol, that skill's Input section governs what to provide.

Example invocation: Run an autonomous investigation on [TARGET]'s move into workflow automation — this supports our Q3 roadmap bet on the same space.

Key Concepts

Two protocols, two jobs

	workshop-facilitation	autonomous-investigation
Who holds the context	The user	The world (public sources)
Interaction shape	One question per turn	Question budget, then proceed
Blocked by silence?	Yes — waits for answers	No — labels assumptions and continues
Schedulable?	No	Yes — that's the point

The contract

Every investigation skill honors all seven clauses. They are not a menu.

1. Question budget — a hard cap (usually 3) on clarifying questions. When the budget is spent or nobody answers, proceed with labeled assumptions. This is what makes investigations schedulable: an unattended run degrades gracefully instead of stalling.