--- name: research description: >- Research at three levels of rigor, and the level gets named before any reading starts. Fires whenever a reply is about to cite a page from the web, which means storing the page and citing the stored copy instead of pasting a link. Fires when somebody wants one question looked up and answered from a few sources. Fires when material is being collected to feed analysis or a formal report, where the run hands over an audit trail a stranger can follow: one fact per row in your own words, the document behind each one, what each document is weak at, and a log of everything opened including the dead ends. Not for weighing options, scoring them, or committing to a course, and not for writing the report. --- ## Name the mode before you open anything Three modes. Differ in how much collection discipline applies; handover follows from that. Say which one before first search. - **cite.** About to cite web page in a reply. Store page, cite stored copy. Minutes. - **lookup.** One question, few sources, an answer. You answer it. references/lookup.md. - **full.** Material that feeds analysis or formal report. Collection protocol below, plus handover contract. Pick by where the output ends up. You know that before the first search. Full whenever the run produces a file another person or a later run opens. Lookup whenever the answer dies in this conversation once the asker has read it. One page to put in front of somebody is cite. Escalate when the answer starts wanting a judgment the sources do not settle. Lookup that turns into weighing two accounts = full run not admitting it. cite and lookup state the answer the sources support. They never score, rank, weight, or state a likelihood; needing one is the escalation. Documents opened before escalating still get source-record rows and consulted-log lines. Write the collection plan after the fact, and say in the plan you wrote it that way. Hand lookup and full to a subagent when the asking thread has other work and the harness offers one. cite cheap enough inline. Delegated lookup returns the answer plus the stored path of every document it cites. ## Meta-rule Per-question operator instructions outrank every rule here. Instruction differs from anything below -> instruction wins. In full mode, following the instruction against a rule here is a deviation, and contract item 8 records it. The three fields sit under the four checks. In cite and lookup, state an override that drops the stored copy in the reply itself: no record exists to carry it. ## cite mode About to put a web page in front of somebody. 1. Open it and store it: the bytes, the retrieval path, the date, the licence terms. 2. Cite the stored copy. Title, originator, date, and where the copy sits. Bare link is not a citation: pages change, links rot, reader cannot check what you read. Where the copy sits has to be a path the reader can still open after this session ends. Scratch path that dies with the session does not qualify. 3. Take any quotation out of the stored copy, never out of memory and never out of a summary of it. No handover file, no collection plan, no check record. Licence forbids keeping the bytes -> cite by title and section, say the text is not stored. ## Full mode Full mode collects. Does not judge, does not draft. Nothing in this mode scores an option, weights a criterion, states a likelihood, or commits to an answer. Output is material somebody else reasons over. So fix the question first, plan the collection against it. ### Words used in one sense only - **Document.** Thing you opened and stored. Every table keys on it. - **Originator.** Body or person that produced a document. A column, never a row. - **Document id.** Short handle assigned when a document is first opened. Written same way in every table, so tables join. - **Verbatim.** Text copied character for character out of a stored document. No other sense here. - **Judgment.** One of the three note kinds. Nothing else here is called a judgment. - **Originator reliability** and **document credibility.** The two rating axes, held apart. - **Gap.** Hole in this run's evidence. ### The handover contract Every full run hands over these eight, or names the ones that do not apply and says why. A section quietly missing is what this contract exists to catch. 1. **The question.** The one question this collection answers, written before collecting, and the mode this run used. Where someone else set it, record their exact wording next to yours. GAO-12-208G, *Designing Evaluations*, chapter 2, is the standard being met: a researchable question is specific, measurable, and free of a presumed answer, and it is settled with whoever asked before the work runs. 2. **The collection plan.** What evidence would answer the question, and what evidence would break it. Written before the first document is opened. Not what the answer hinges on: that needs an answer, and there is not one yet. 3. **Fact notes.** One row per fact. 4. **Source records.** One row per document. Provenance is columns here, not a second table. 5. **Contrary material.** What contradicts other material you collected, or contradicts what the plan expected to find. Each row cites the consulted-log line it came from. 6. **Consulted log.** Every document opened, dead ends included, one line each on what it yielded or why it did not. The dead ends are the point: they are what stops the next run reopening what this one already ruled out. GAO-24-106786, *Government Auditing Standards*, chapter 8, sets the bar the log has to clear: the record has to let an experienced person who was not there work out what was done and what it produced. 7. **Gaps and the stop.** What was sought and refused, what could not be obtained, any claim you believe and cannot source, and which stopping condition ended the collection. 8. **Check record.** One row per check below, with its verdict. Never record a check you did not run: an unrun check is a verdict of not run. A check that stays failed carries a deviation block, and this item is where the block goes. Hand it over as one Markdown file and name its path. Notes scattered through a transcript are not an artifact. ### The three tables **Fact notes.** Fact in your own words, document id, kind. ``` id Fact Doc Kind Why held F1 Onboarding completion 14% in Q1 D3 fact F2 Pricing drove the churn D5 judgment F3 Renewal terms hold through FY27 D2 assumption D2 signed, no notice clause ``` Mark every row fact, assumption, or judgment. Carry why an assumption is held. Do not carry what follows if it is wrong: needs analysis nobody has done yet. **Source records.** One row per document, eleven columns. ``` id | title | originator | date | locator | class | originator reliability | document credibility | derives from | licence | stored at ``` Title, originator, date, stable locator together = what lets someone else render a citation and reopen the document. Filename alone is neither. `class` = what kind of document it is, which decides what it will never tell you. references/sources.md. `derives from` names the document this one took its facts from, or `none`. `licence` and `stored at` = the provenance: terms you may use the bytes under, and where the bytes are. **Consulted log.** One line per document opened. ``` D7 regulator's 2025 inspection report the two findings on staffing D8 agency press office, by phone no answer in two attempts, dropped D9 vendor status page current state only, no history, useless ``` ### The eight steps Steps 3 to 7 run once per candidate document and repeat. The stopping rule ends the loop. references/stopping.md. Step 8 runs once. 1. **Fix the question.** Narrow an area to one question you can answer. Keep the question and its answer apart: you do not have the answer yet. references/collection.md. 2. **Plan the collection.** Name what would answer the question and what would break it. Then decide what to go after first. references/collection.md. 3. **Find candidates.** Record where each candidate came from as you find it, not afterwards. references/collection.md. 4. **Open it and decide whether it is usable.** Skim before you take notes. Assign the document id here. A document you reject still gets a consulted-log line. Cannot obtain it at all: references/refused.md. 5. **Rate it.** Originator reliability and document credibility, separately, plus what it derives from. references/sources.md and references/pitfalls.md. 6. **Take notes by transformation.** Understand the point, then write it in your own words. Copied wording drags originator's framing into an artifact meant to be free of it. Quote only where the exact wording is itself the fact, and mark the quotation as one. AFH 33-337, *The Tongue and Quill*, chapter 17, is the shape: facts, assumptions, and the standards in play get written down as separate labelled groups rather than blended into a narrative. 7. **Store it.** Keep the bytes, the retrieval path, the date, and the licence terms. Citation you cannot reopen is citation nobody can check. Take any verbatim quotation from the stored copy, never from a summary and never from memory. 8. **Check and hand over.** Run the four checks, record the verdicts as contract item 8, and fix a fail rather than noting it. ### The four checks 1. **The join.** Every document id in the fact notes appears in the source records and in the consulted log. Fails when the same document is called three names, and the consumer cannot tell which fact rests on what. 2. **The licence.** No note carries a source's wording as its own, and no bytes are stored for a document whose terms forbid it. Fails into a legal problem and into notes that smuggle the originator's framing. 3. **The stop.** Item 7 names the stopping condition that fired, plus every document sought and refused. An empty item 7 fails unless it states that nothing was refused and nothing was sought in vain. Fails when a collection that hit a wall arrives looking complete. 4. **The marks.** Every note carries a kind mark, and the mark matches what the note says. A causal claim marked `fact` is a judgment. Fails silently downstream, which is why it is a check and not a rule. ### A barred fix is a deviation Step 8 says fix a fail rather than noting it. Two things bar the fix. Operator's instruction overrides the check, under the Meta-rule. Or two rules here collide and no wording satisfies both. Nothing else bars a fix, and a fail that is only tedious to clear is still a fail. Fix barred -> handover carries a deviation block, and contract item 8 is where it sits. Each failed check carries its own block: two failed checks are two blocks, never one covering both. Three fields, none optional: - Which check, by its number in the four checks above. Where the instruction overrode something other than one of the four, a contract item or a rule from this file, name that instead. Those carry no number, and a deviation with nothing named in this field is an unrecorded fail. - What authorises the deviation, quoted. The operator's instruction in the operator's own words, or both colliding rules with the side you took. A paraphrase authorises nothing. - What the stranger reading the handover loses by it. A deviation short a field is an unrecorded fail, which is what the check record exists to stop. A document you were refused is not a deviation: that goes in item 7 with the rest of the gaps. ### Do not - Do not write a note you cannot trace to a stored document. An unsourced belief goes in item 7. - Do not paste a source's wording into a note. - Do not quote or store the bytes of a document whose licence forbids it. Cite it by title and section, and record the restriction in its row. - Do not score, rank, weight, or choose between anything. - Do not state a likelihood or a confidence level. - Do not write the answer. - Do not collect only what fits what you expected to find. - Do not treat an originator's own account of itself as neutral. - Do not count two documents that both copied a third as two. - Do not drop a fact because it cannot be counted. Record it and say it resists measurement. - Do not call one document by two names across two tables. ## Reference files Load on demand. Each is this skill's own file. - references/lookup.md. lookup mode end to end. Load when the mode is lookup. - references/collection.md. Full mode steps 1 to 3, plus lookup mode's first step: fixing the question, planning what to go after and in what order, finding candidates. - references/refused.md. What to do when a document is refused, walled, or does not exist. Load the moment a document cannot be obtained. - references/sources.md. Full mode steps 4 and 5: classes of document and what each will not volunteer, rating originator reliability apart from document credibility, corroboration, circular reporting. - references/stopping.md. When to stop collecting, and which stopping condition to name in item 7. Load when deciding whether to open another document. - references/pitfalls.md. Failure modes full mode is built against, and the holes in this skill's own sourcing.