mcpField
R
research

research

github.com/juliusbrusseeDevelopment1.2k780 installsUpdated 11w ago
Repository

About research

research is a skill for gathering external facts and handing sourced findings to the spec workflow. It helps developers resolve questions about libraries, APIs, versions, and established patterns without treating guesses as facts.

Key features

  1. 01Scope unknowns into concrete questions
  2. 02Gather evidence from primary sources
  3. 03Distill findings with source references
  4. 04Flag unverified claims and conflicts
  5. 05Hand findings to the spec skill

Use cases

  1. 01Check an uncertain API or dependency behavior
  2. 02Research a domain question raised during specification

Install

Copy the command and run it in a terminal.

$npx skills add https://github.com/juliusbrussee/cavekit --skill research

After installing, type/researchin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.

Details

From the project README

research — external knowledge → §R

Every finding cites a source. No source → flag it ?, never write a guess as fact.

"Process without library context gives you well-organized hallucinations." Build invents a plausible-but-wrong API & §B fills with avoidable bugs. Research is the external oracle: pull the real fact once, log it caveman, never re-derive.

WHEN TO RESEARCH

  • A §C/§I/§V decision hinges on a lib, API, version, or pattern you are unsure of.
  • You are about to assume how an external dependency behaves.
  • The idea touches a domain with real prior art (auth, payments, crypto, rate-limit).
  • /grill parked a ? that the outside world must answer.

Skip when the build touches only code you already wrote. Research scales to the unknown, ⊥ to habit.

FOUR STEPS

1. SCOPE

Turn the unknown into 1-3 concrete questions. Vague "research auth" → "JWT lib for Node ESM, maintained?" + "refresh-token rotation: current best practice?". A scoped question gets a citable answer; a vague one gets an essay.

2. GATHER

Use web search / docs tools. Prefer primary sources: official docs, the repo, the RFC, the paper. Two independent sources beat one confident blog. For a big sweep, spawn a sub-agent so the raw pages never touch this context — it returns only the distilled finding + source.

3. DISTILL

Crush each answer to one caveman line + its source. Drop the prose. The §R row is the memory; the tab you read is not.

R3|refresh token|rotate on use, revoke family on reuse-detect|datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6819#section-5.2.2.3

4. HAND OFF

Emit the §R rows & hand to the spec skill to append. If a finding changes a constraint or interface, note the §C/§I edit for spec too. Research proposes; spec writes.

SOURCE DISCIPLINE

  • Cite a URL, repo, RFC, or paper per row. Verbatim identifiers/versions.
  • Could not verify → write the row but flag ? in the finding & say so. An unverified claim labeled honestly is fine; one disguised as fact is a future §B.
  • Conflicting sources → log both, let the user pick. ⊥ silently average them.

WHEN TO STOP

Done when every scoped question has a sourced §R row (or an honest ?), and no build decision still rests on an unchecked assumption. ⊥ research past the questions you scoped — that is just burning the attention budget.

BOUNDARIES

  • ⊥ write SPEC.md. Hand §R rows to spec.
  • ⊥ write a finding as fact without a source.
  • ⊥ dump raw pages into context or §R. Distill or it does not land.
  • ⊥ research what you can read in the repo. Local truth > web guess.

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