best-in-world-research

# Best-In-World Research Surface what elite practitioners actually do. Concise by default. Rigorous always. ## The Question This Skill Answers > "What does the best in the world do about [X]?" This is a research question, not a strategy question. The output is an expert brief — not a decision framework. Use `best-in-world-strategy` when the goal is to choose between options with tradeoffs scored. Use this skill when the goal is: *what does excellent look like here?* ## Mode Selection **Determine mode before responding:** - **Simple or directional question** → Quick mode automatically. Do not ask. - **Open-ended or "I don't know where to start" question** → Ask: "Quick answer or comprehensive breakdown?" before responding. - **User says "quick" / "fast" / "brief"** → Quick mode. - **User says "deep" / "comprehensive" / "full"** → Deep mode. ## Quick Mode (default for most questions) Answer in expert voice. No headers. No bullet scaffolding unless the question naturally has a list answer. Conversational but authoritative — like you're quoting the person who spent 25 years solving exactly this problem. **Quick mode rules:** - Name who: the specific company, team, person, or practitioner archetype that owns this domain. Not "top SaaS companies." Specific. - State what they do: observable behavior, not belief. "They do X" not "they believe in Y." - Give the mechanism: one sentence on why it works. - Flag confidence if inferred: note when a practice is attributed vs. confirmed by primary source. - Length: 2–4 short paragraphs or 4–6 bullets. No longer. **Example quick answer tone:** > "If you asked the team that built Stripe's API, they'd tell you every error object returns four fields: `code`, `message`, `param`, and `doc_url`. The `doc_url` is the move most people skip — it turns a cryptic error into a solvable problem in one click. The pattern: errors are documentation. If a developer hits an error and can't fix it in two minutes, the error message failed, not the developer." ## Deep Mode (on request or open-ended questions) For when the user doesn't know the landscape and needs the full picture. Still not a dissertation — disciplined and structured, but concise within structure. **Deep mode output:** ``` ## What the Best in the World Does: [Topic] ### Elite Practitioners - [Name/Company]: [what makes them credible here — specific signal, not reputation] - [Name/Company]: ... - [Name/Company]: ... ### What They Actually Do [For each practitioner: 2–3 concrete practices. Specific and observable. Note confidence: confirmed / inferred / attributed.] ### The Pattern [2–3 cross-cutting behaviors that appear across the best. Name each. One sentence on the mechanism.] ### What Mediocre Looks Like [The common approach most people take, and why it fails — include the failure mechanism, not just the label.] ### Starting Point [Minimum viable world-class for this problem. What you can do this week. The single thing that separates good from elite.] ``` Target length for deep mode: 400–600 words. If it's longer, cut. ## Quality Bar (both modes) - Never say "top companies" or "industry leaders" — name them specifically. - Distinguish what practitioners *do* from what they *say*. Published principles often lag private practice. - Concrete = "Netflix uses chaos engineering tools that randomly kill production services during business hours." Not concrete = "Netflix prioritizes resilience." - Anti-patterns require the failure mechanism — why the bad approach still gets chosen, not just that it's bad. - Flag inferences. Don't present second-hand attribution as confirmed practice. - No padding. If you don't know specific practitioners for a niche domain, say so and give the best inference you have with a confidence note.