// Validate and prioritize starting papers for snowball surveys. Evaluates which seeds will yield the richest citation traces based on citation count, recency, and network position.
Identify what the literature has NOT addressed — missing methods, untested combinations, unexplored applications, contradictions without resolution. Used by all strategies.
Identify recurring themes across papers using qualitative coding methodology. Produces a codebook with theme definitions, supporting evidence, and frequency counts. Used by narrative-review.
Generate PRISMA-compliant flow data documenting the screening funnel — counts at each stage (identification, screening, eligibility, inclusion) with exclusion reasons. Used by systematic-survey via prisma-screening tactic.
Construct a hierarchical field map from paper collection — multi-level taxonomy with parent/child relationships, paper counts per node, and maturity indicators. Used by scoping-survey.
Determine when additional searching yields diminishing returns. Analyzes the latest expansion batch against existing corpus to judge continue/near-saturation/saturated. Used by snowball and systematic-survey.
Structured data extraction from deep-read papers — produces comparison tables (method, dataset, metrics, results, limitations). Used by systematic-survey and deep-survey.
| name | seed-selection |
| description | Validate and prioritize starting papers for snowball surveys. Evaluates which seeds will yield the richest citation traces based on citation count, recency, and network position. |
| execution | subagent |
| prompt | ./prompt.md |
| input | seed_papers (string), context (string) |
Validate and prioritize starting papers for snowball surveys.
Subagent — spawned via subagent-spawning/spawn-agent skill.
Seed evaluation requires analyzing citation networks and making strategic judgments about which papers will yield the richest traces. Dedicated context for this analytical work.