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.

npx skills add https://github.com/mattpocock/skills --skill research

Download ZIP GitHub

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

Its job:

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.
Write the findings to a single Markdown file, citing each claim's source.
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.

More skills from mattpocock

writing-for-agents

Writing documents for agents. Use when creating or editing skills, or modifying AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md.

Stop. That last message did not land — re-pitch it.

to-questionnaire

Turn a decision you can't fully answer into a questionnaire for someone else to fill in.

Interview the user relentlessly about a plan or design until reaching shared understanding, resolving each branch of the decision tree. Use when user wants to stress-test a plan, get grilled on their design, or mentions "grill me".

researchcommunicationproject-management

Test-driven development with red-green-refactor loop. Use when user wants to build features or fix bugs using TDD, mentions "red-green-refactor", wants integration tests, or asks for test-first development.

developmenttesting

Compact the current conversation into a handoff document for another agent to pick up.

communicationproject-managementdocument

Build a throwaway prototype to flesh out a design before committing to it. Routes between two branches — a runnable terminal app for state/business-logic questions, or several radically different UI variations toggleable from one route. Use when the user wants to prototype, sanity-check a data model or state machine, mock up a UI, explore design options, or says "prototype this", "let me play with it", "try a few designs".

developmentdesigncreative

Triage issues through a state machine driven by triage roles. Use when user wants to create an issue, triage issues, review incoming bugs or feature requests, prepare issues for an AFK agent, or manage issue workflow.

developmentproject-managementcommunication