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Agent Skill

Research

research

Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.

MattpocockGeneralShell

381K installs

mattpocock/skills

by Mattpocock

Score

9.3

/ 10

Installs

381K

Repo Stars

237.3K

Last Updated

1d ago

Fresh

Quality Ratio

96%

Description

Verified

Language

Shell

First Published

Jul 2026

Summary

The Research agent skill systematically gathers external knowledge, such as library behavior, API usage, and best practices, distilling it into a durable, citable research log to ensure agent outputs are grounded in facts. This agent skill is essential for developers working on projects that involve external dependencies, new technologies, or require adherence to established patterns like authentication or payment processing. It is a skill with 357K installs, indicating its broad utility across various development tasks. The agent skill guides the AI to scope unknown areas into concrete questions, gather information from primary sources, and distill findings into concise, sourced log entries. It strictly enforces source discipline, requiring every finding to cite a URL, repository, RFC, or paper, flagging unverified claims with a `?` rather than presenting them as fact. The skill also ensures that research outputs, labeled as `§R` rows, are handed off to the spec skill for durable logging, preventing the agent from directly writing architectural specifications.

Skill Definition

Spin up a background agent to do the research, so you keep working while it reads.

Its job:

  1. Investigate the question against primary sources (official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs), not a secondary write-up of them. Follow every claim back to the source that owns it.
  2. Write the findings to a single Markdown file, citing each claim's source.
  3. Save it where the repo already keeps such notes; match the existing convention, and if there is none, put it somewhere sensible and say where.

How to Use

Use in O-mega

Claude Code

npx skills add mattpocock/skills research