---

name: research description: "Research: structured investigation, fact-checking, explanation traces." user-invocable: true argument-hint: "<research topic or claim to verify>" agent: research-coordinator-engineer context: fork allowed-tools:

• Read
• Bash
• Glob
• Grep
• Agent
• Write
• WebFetch
• WebSearch routing: force_route: true not_for: "code review (use review), security audit (use security)" triggers:
  • "research-pipeline"
  • "research"
  • "formal research"
  • "research with artifacts"
  • "systematic investigation"
  • "research report"
  • "gather evidence"
  • "fact check"
  • "fact-check"
  • "verify claims"
  • "check facts"
  • "verify this quote"
  • "is this accurate"
  • "is this true"
  • "check this claim"
  • "verify this"
  • "are these numbers right"
  • "why did you"
  • "explain routing"
  • "show trace"
  • "decision log"
  • "why that agent"
  • "explain decision"
  • "show decisions"
  • "trace log" category: research pairs_with:
  • review
  • writing

---

Research Skill

Three modes. Select by request signal:

| Signal | Mode | |--------|------| | Formal research, investigation, sourced report, gather evidence | Research Pipeline | | Fact check, verify claims, check facts, is this accurate, verify quote | Fact-Check | | Why did you, explain routing, show trace, decision log, why that agent | Explanation Traces |

Default: Research Pipeline.

---

Mode A: Research Pipeline

---

Mode B: Fact-Check

Verify every factual claim in a draft before publish. Burden of proof sits on the claim, not the checker. Works standalone or as a pre-publish gate. Non-blocking: the report warns; the caller decides whether to publish.

Phase 1: EXTRACT

List every checkable claim: statistics, prices, dates, quotes, attributions, titles, event facts, rankings, causal assertions. Opinions and speculation stay out.

For each claim, record: ID, verbatim text, type (stat/quote/attribution/event/title/price/causal), location. Extract quotes verbatim for exact-words comparison.

Gate: Every checkable assertion has a claim ID. Sweep the document twice.

Phase 2: VERIFY

Work claim by claim.

1. Check provided sources first. Search caller-supplied documents before external sources. Record exact passages.
2. Read laterally. Judge a source by what other sources say about it, not by its own presentation.
3. Climb the source tier. Follow citations upward: primary (study, filing, transcript) > direct secondary (interviews, primary reading) > derived (aggregators, rewrites). A broken citation chain caps the claim at Unverifiable.
4. Triangulate contested claims. Two independent sources (separate origins, not wire rewrites). One source suffices for routine facts from a primary document.
5. Verify quotes on three axes. All must hold: exact words match, attributed speaker confirmed, original context supports the meaning used.
6. Check staleness. Time-sensitive claims expire. Prices/rates: 1 day-1 week. Counts: 1-3 months. Titles/roles: 3-6 months. Event status: until event date. Surveys: 6-12 months. Science: 1-3 years. Laws: 6-12 months. Records/superlatives: re-check every use. Stable history: none.

Gate: Every claim has an evidence record.

Phase 3: ADJUDICATE

Assign each claim one label:

| Label | Assign when | |-------|-------------| | Verified | Evidence supports; current within staleness window; sufficient source tier | | Disputed | Evidence contradicts; newer source supersedes; quote fails any axis | | Unverifiable | Sources engage the claim but settle nothing | | Missing-source | No available source addresses it |

Rules: contradiction beats support. Partial verification gets the weakest label. Stale figure superseded by newer = Disputed; merely old with no newer figure = Unverifiable.

Gate: Every claim carries one label and a one-line justification.

Phase 4: REPORT

# Fact-Check Report: [document]
## Summary
Claims: N | Verified: n | Disputed: n | Unverifiable: n | Missing-source: n
Unchecked: n (reason)
## Per-Claim Findings
### C1 -- [label]
Claim: [text] | Evidence: [source + passage] | Reasoning: [why this label]
## Warnings
[Every Disputed/Missing-source claim with correction]
## Publish Recommendation
[Hold / fix-then-publish / clear]

Every time-sensitive Verified claim carries its as-of date.

Gate: Report covers every claim ID. Warnings lists every Disputed and Missing-source finding.

---

Mode C: Explanation Traces

Read the per-dispatch route event log and present routing decisions as a human-readable timeline. Answer "why did I get routed here?" from recorded events only -- never from reconstruction or rationalization.

Log path: ${CLAUDE_LEARNING_DIR:-$HOME/.claude/learning}/route-events.jsonl (append-only JSONL).

Phase 1: LOCATE

LOG="${CLAUDE_LEARNING_DIR:-$HOME/.claude/learning}/route-events.jsonl"
wc -l "$LOG"

If absent or empty, report the path and the producing hook (hooks/routing-decision-recorder.py). Do not reconstruct from memory.

Phase 2: PARSE

Parse each JSON line. Two event types: DECISION (one per /do-routed dispatch) and OUTCOME (one per finalized dispatch). See references/trace-schema.md for full field semantics.

Filter to the user's query:

| User signal | Filter | |-------------|--------| | Names an agent or skill | DECISION/OUTCOME events matching that name | | "Why routed here" / latest | Most recent DECISION, current session first | | Outcome question | OUTCOME events, joined to decisions | | No specific target | Chronological timeline, most recent session |

Join OUTCOME to DECISION on same session AND key == "{agent}:{skill}". File adjacency is unreliable.

Phase 3: PRESENT

Sort by ts. For each decision, show: time, agent+skill, complexity, request snippet, health at decision (three states: numeric, no-weight-row, legacy), alternates, outcome.

Lead with the answer to the user's specific question, then offer surrounding context. Flag gaps honestly: pre-instrumentation entries, unmatched outcomes.

request_snippet is private session data: show to the session's user, keep out of PR bodies, issues, exports.

---

Deep References

| Signal | Reference | Content | |--------|-----------|---------| | Event field schema, health states, join rules | references/trace-schema.md | DECISION/OUTCOME field semantics | | Diagnosing thin trace data, consumer mistakes | references/preferred-patterns.md | Failure mode catalog for log reading | | Parse/read errors, missing log, unmatched outcomes | references/error-handling.md | Error-fix mappings for trace reading |