| name | dh-pipeline |
| description | Full digital humanities research lifecycle orchestrator. Manages a 12-stage pipeline from initial research question through final submitted paper, with mandatory ethics, integrity, and final quality gates. Tracks all sources, tools, and supervision feedback in a DH Material Passport for cross-session continuity. |
dh-pipeline — Full Lifecycle Orchestrator
What This Skill Does
dh-pipeline orchestrates the complete DH research process across 12 stages:
Stage 1 EXPLORE → dh-explore (full mode)
Stage 2 PROPOSE → dh-write (proposal mode)
Stage 2.5 ETHICS GATE ← MANDATORY
Stage 3 METHODOLOGY → dh-explore (methodology-guide mode)
Stage 4 WRITE → dh-write (full/thesis/article)
Stage 4.5 INTEGRITY GATE ← MANDATORY
Stage 5 REVIEW → dh-review (full-review mode)
Stage 5.5 SUPERVISOR → dh-review (supervisor-feedback mode)
Stage 6 REVISE → dh-write (revision mode)
Stage 6.5 FINAL GATE ← MANDATORY
Stage 7 FINALIZE → dh-write (format-convert mode)
Stage 8 DOCUMENT → DH Material Passport export
Who It's For
- Graduate students managing a dissertation research project over months
- Faculty managing a large grant-funded DH project
- Anyone who wants structured oversight of a complex DH workflow
- Projects where research integrity, source provenance, and revision history must be tracked
Modes and Trigger Keywords
| Mode | Trigger | What Happens |
|---|
full | /dh-pipeline | Start or resume from the current pipeline stage |
status | /dh-pipeline status | Show current stage and what has been completed |
resume | /dh-pipeline resume | Resume from a DH Material Passport |
stage N | /dh-pipeline stage 4 | Jump directly to stage N |
gate 2.5/4.5/6.5 | /dh-pipeline gate 4.5 | Work through a specific gate |
passport | /dh-pipeline passport | View or export the current DH Material Passport |
The Three Mandatory Gates
These gates cannot be bypassed or skipped. They exist to protect research quality:
| Gate | Stage | Protects Against |
|---|
| Ethics Gate | 2.5 | Unethical data use, copyright violation, undisclosed bias |
| Integrity Gate | 4.5 | Fabricated or unverified citations, corpus-draft inconsistency |
| Final Gate | 6.5 | Unresolved must-fix items, unchecked claims, submission failures |
If a user attempts to skip a gate, the pipeline orchestrator refuses and presents the remaining checklist items.
DH Material Passport
The Passport is the spine of the pipeline — it persists across sessions and is the only form of state memory.
Schema: ../shared/contracts/passport/dh_passport.schema.json
Key fields:
pipeline_stage: current position in the pipeline
gates_passed[]: which mandatory gates have been completed (with tokens)
primary_source_corpus[]: all primary sources with OCR quality data
literature_corpus[]: secondary sources in CSL-JSON format
tool_refs[]: all software tools used
supervision_log[]: all supervisor/reviewer feedback rounds
Save your passport at the end of every session — the pipeline cannot resume without it.
Mode Routing
- Read
agents/pipeline_orchestrator_agent.md — this is the first agent to execute
- The orchestrator determines stage, presents status, and dispatches to the appropriate skill
- Gate stages are handled by
agents/integrity_verification_agent.md
- The
agents/material_passport_agent.md is called after each stage to update the passport
- The
agents/supervision_checkpoint_agent.md fires at Stages 2, 5.5, and post-revision
- The
agents/state_tracker_agent.md handles session start/end and cross-session resume
Shared References
Load at startup:
- Read:
../shared/references/dh_ethics_protocol.md
- Read:
../shared/references/anti_leakage_protocol.md
- Read:
references/pipeline_stages_guide.md
The Canonical Test Case
A research project studying sentiment and topic evolution in 19th-century abolitionist newspapers from Chronicling America, with a corpus of ~300 issues and 75–82% estimated OCR accuracy. This project would:
- Stage 1: identify Chronicling America as the primary archive; assess OCR quality; formulate RQ about rhetoric shift after the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
- Stage 2.5 Ethics Gate: verify public domain status, document OCR quality, identify Chronicling America API terms
- Stage 4: write a Cultural Analytics-style hybrid article
- Stage 4.5 Integrity Gate: verify all Chronicling America URLs use persistent identifiers; check MALLET and spaCy are cited
- Stage 5: review simulation with 60% technical / 40% humanistic balance for Cultural Analytics