Agent-Skills.md

Agent Skills: Technical Research

Explore ideas, validate concepts, and research broadly across technical, business, and market domains. Preliminary phase before discussion-specification-plan-implement-review workflow. Use when: (1) User has a new idea to explore, (2) Need to research a topic deeply, (3) Validating feasibility - technical, business, or market, (4) Learning and exploration without necessarily building anything, (5) User says 'research this' or 'explore this idea', (6) Brain dumping early thoughts before formal discussion. Creates research documents in docs/workflow/research/ that may seed the technical-discussion phase.

technical-explorationfeasibility-analysismarket-researchidea-evaluationexploratory-research
researchID: leeovery/claude-technical-workflows/technical-research

Repository

leeovery/claude-technical-workflows
leeoveryLicense: MIT
9

Install this agent skill to your local

pnpm dlx add-skill https://github.com/leeovery/claude-technical-workflows/tree/HEAD/skills/technical-research

Skill Files

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skills/technical-research/SKILL.md

Skill Metadata

Name
technical-research

Technical Research

Act as research partner with broad expertise spanning technical, product, business, and market domains. Your role is learning, exploration, and discovery.

Purpose in the Workflow

This skill can be used:

  • Sequentially: First step - explore ideas before detailed discussion
  • Standalone (Contract entry): To research and validate any idea, feature, or concept

Either way: Explore feasibility (technical, business, market), validate assumptions, document findings.

What This Skill Needs

  • Topic or idea (required) - What to research/explore
  • Existing context (optional) - Any prior research or constraints

Before proceeding, confirm the required input is clear. If anything is missing or unclear, STOP and resolve with the user.

If no topic provided

Output the next fenced block as a code block:

What would you like to research or explore? This could be a new idea, a
technical concept, a market opportunity — anything you want to investigate.

STOP. Wait for user response.

If topic is vague or could go many directions

Output the next fenced block as a code block:

You mentioned {topic}. That could cover a lot of ground — is there a specific
angle you'd like to start with, or should I explore broadly?

STOP. Wait for user response.

Resuming After Context Refresh

Context refresh (compaction) summarizes the conversation, losing procedural detail. When you detect a context refresh has occurred — the conversation feels abruptly shorter, you lack memory of recent steps, or a summary precedes this message — follow this recovery protocol:

  1. Re-read this skill file completely. Do not rely on your summary of it. The full process, steps, and rules must be reloaded.
  2. Read all tracking and state files for the current topic — plan index files, review tracking files, implementation tracking files, or any working documents this skill creates. These are your source of truth for progress.
  3. Check git state. Run git status and git log --oneline -10 to see recent commits. Commit messages follow a conventional pattern that reveals what was completed.
  4. Announce your position to the user before continuing: what step you believe you're at, what's been completed, and what comes next. Wait for confirmation.

Do not guess at progress or continue from memory. The files on disk and git history are authoritative — your recollection is not.

Output Formatting

When announcing a new step, output ── ── ── ── ── on its own line before the step heading.

Step 0: Resume Detection

Check if research files exist in .workflows/research/.

If files exist

Read them. Announce what's been explored so far and what themes have emerged. Ask the user whether to continue or start fresh.

STOP. Wait for user response.

If no files exist

→ Proceed to Step 1.

Step 1: Initialize Research

  1. Ensure the research directory exists: .workflows/research/
  2. Load template.md — use it to create .workflows/research/exploration.md
  3. Fill frontmatter: topic: exploration, today's date
  4. Populate the Starting Point section with context from the user
  5. Commit the initial file

→ Proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Load Research Guidelines

Load research-guidelines.md and follow its instructions as written.

→ Proceed to Step 3.

Step 3: Research Session

Load research-session.md and follow its instructions as written.