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feat: add the research skill

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A small, model-invoked skill that spins up a background agent to
investigate a question against high-trust primary sources, then leaves a
single cited Markdown file wherever the repo keeps such notes.

Wires it into the plugin set, both READMEs (Model-invoked), a docs page,
and the ask-matt router, per the repo's promoted-skill conventions.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Matt Pocock 2026-07-01 16:32:15 +01:00
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Quickstart:
```bash
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill=research
```
```bash
npx skills update research
```
[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/research)
## What it does
`research` answers a question by reading the sources that own the answer and leaving a cited Markdown file behind. It works only from **primary sources** — official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs — never a secondary write-up of them, so what it saves is traceable back to something authoritative rather than a summary of a summary.
## When to reach for it
Type `/research`, or the agent reaches for it automatically when a task turns into reading legwork.
Reach for it when the next step is *finding something out* — how an API behaves, what a spec actually says, whether a claim holds — and you'd rather not stall your own thread doing the reading. For sharpening a plan by interview instead of by reading, use [grilling](https://aihero.dev/skills-grilling); for exploring what to build with throwaway code, use [prototype](https://aihero.dev/skills-prototype).
## Delegated legwork
The defining move is that the reading runs as a **background agent**. You keep working; it goes off, follows each claim back to its primary source, and drops a single cited Markdown file into wherever the repo keeps such notes. Research is legwork you delegate, not thinking you outsource — you get back a document to react to, with its sources attached.
## Where it fits
A reach-for-it-anytime standalone that feeds the thinking skills: the file it produces is something to grill, plan, or design against, so it sits upstream of work like [grilling](https://aihero.dev/skills-grilling) and [to-prd](https://aihero.dev/skills-to-prd) rather than in the build chain. For the whole map, see [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt).