search-strategy-step-1-identify-query-type

name	search-strategy-step-1-identify-query-type
description	Sub-skill of search-strategy: Step 1: Identify Query Type (+2).
version	1.0.0
category	business
type	reference
scripts_exempt	true

Step 1: Identify Query Type (+2)

Step 1: Identify Query Type

Classify the user's question to determine search strategy:

Query Type	Example	Strategy
Decision	"What did we decide about X?"	Prioritize conversations (~~chat, email), look for conclusion signals
Status	"What's the status of Project Y?"	Prioritize recent activity, task trackers, status updates
Document	"Where's the spec for Z?"	Prioritize Drive, wiki, shared docs
Person	"Who's working on X?"	Search task assignments, message authors, doc collaborators
Factual	"What's our policy on X?"	Prioritize wiki, official docs, then confirmatory conversations
Temporal	"When did X happen?"	Search with broad date range, look for timestamps
Exploratory	"What do we know about X?"	Broad search across all sources, synthesize

Step 2: Extract Search Components

From the query, extract:

• Keywords: Core terms that must appear in results
• Entities: People, projects, teams, tools (use memory system if available)
• Intent signals: Decision words, status words, temporal markers
• Constraints: Time ranges, source hints, author filters
• Negations: Things to exclude

Step 3: Generate Sub-Queries Per Source

For each available source, create one or more targeted queries:

Prefer semantic search for:

• Conceptual questions ("What do we think about...")
• Questions where exact keywords are unknown
• Exploratory queries

Prefer keyword search for:

• Known terms, project names, acronyms
• Exact phrases the user quoted
• Filter-heavy queries (from:, in:, after:)

Generate multiple query variants when the topic might be referred to differently:

User: "Kubernetes setup"
Queries: "Kubernetes", "k8s", "cluster", "container orchestration"