research

SkillFiles & storage

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 research worker.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the research skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by connorgriffin/skills in skills/tools/research/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Research-worker dispatch

Use exactly one research worker; never create a chain of workers.

The coordinator supplies the selected adapter, explicit research-worker model, explicit research-worker effort, and the complete research task. Dispatch only through skills/drivers/orchestrate/scripts/codex-worker.py or skills/drivers/orchestrate/scripts/claude-worker.py, using the selected adapter's read-only surface. Never use the built-in Agent tool, Workflow tool, or background-agent machinery.

Use the provider-neutral hosted-source capability defined by the selected adapter's dispatch reference on every read-only research start, with one coordinator-owned state file under the coordinator's session-scratch directory. The selected adapter's resume, stop, and verify surfaces retain lifecycle ownership. Do not restate provider argv here.

After selection, this interface does not reclassify research work or choose a model or effort. Preserve adapter-owned state and coordinator-owned recovery through the orchestrate adapter contract; do not restate its command or lifecycle mechanics here.

Before dispatch, the coordinator writes the exact complete research-task prompt bytes to an immutable session-scratch file and passes that file's contents as the selected adapter's positional prompt. The worker receives no chat transcript or other coordinator-session material. The prompt requires the worker to return a final message beginning SOURCE_ACCESS_UNAVAILABLE: when hosted search or fetch is refused, and to write no findings document in that case.

Only when that start completed with a terminal, resumable session and its final message begins with the exact SOURCE_ACCESS_UNAVAILABLE: prefix may the coordinator fetch the required public sources. Create a unique .research-sources.* directory under the worker cwd, store only fetched public unauthenticated source files plus manifest.md mapping each file to its source URL, and resume the same worker with the manifest's absolute path. This bounded handoff is the sole narrow exception to the original-prompt-only rule and takes precedence over it. The directory is removed after completion.

If the adapter leaves no resumable session or the coordinator cannot obtain the required primary sources, stop explicitly and write no successful findings document. Never put transcripts, credentials, secrets, .env, patient data, authenticated or private source material, or unrelated coordinator-session content in the handoff.

The worker performs the research directly and returns source-cited findings to the coordinator. Never spawn another background agent or nested worker. If the worker fails or is interrupted, report the failure explicitly. Do not describe a successful dispatch as completed research. The coordinator writes the returned findings to the single Markdown file required below.

The research worker's 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. Return the findings to the coordinator, citing each claim's source.
  3. The coordinator writes the returned findings to a single Markdown file. 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.

Signals

GitHub stars
20
Forks
5
Last commit
Sep 2026
Hacker News mentions
20
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
research-connorgriffin
Source
github.com/connorgriffin/skills