git:20260702.fa69d6a to git:20260711.5972d3e

---

name: research-first

description: >

Apply when planning fixes, investigating tech debt, architecting solutions, or

diagnosing unknown issues that may involve external frameworks, dependencies,

or platform behavior. Search online for current documentation and

state-of-the-art approaches before tracing through code.

context: fork

agent: Explore

---

## Research Before Planning Protocol

This skill body runs in an isolated Explore context: it has no conversation

history and cannot spawn further sub-agents. Work from the task statement it

receives, run searches and reads directly, and return a compact findings

report.

Scope guard — research the outside world only when the problem involves it:

- If the question involves external frameworks, dependencies, platform or

toolchain behavior, or a suspected upstream bug: research online first.

- If the question is purely repo-local (project conventions, invariants,

existing code structure), skip web research; the answer lives in the

repository (AGENTS.md, docs/, and the source itself).

- If WebSearch/WebFetch are unavailable in this environment, state that

explicitly and proceed with code tracing rather than stalling.

When researching:

1. Search current official documentation to confirm the behavior is NOT

intended and NOT already fixed in a newer release

2. Search for state-of-the-art solutions, known community workarounds, and

recent discussion of this problem type

3. Run multiple searches across distinct sources (official docs, issue

trackers, release notes) rather than trusting the first hit

4. Report all findings — with URLs — before any code tracing begins

Then trace each problem end-to-end through the actual source code.

Do not stop until ≥95% confident in the root cause for every issue being

investigated, and mark anything below that threshold as UNVERIFIED with what

evidence is missing.