Gather external knowledge the spec needs and distill it into §R — the durable research log — so build grounds in facts instead of hallucinating library behavior. Each finding cites a source; unsourced claims are flagged, never written as fact. Triggers when a spec decision hinges on a library/API/be

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.