Files
holocron/plugins/bin/.apm/skills/research/SKILL.md
Defame1297 ee6b04061a refactor(bin): retrofit research to the ADR-0020 context contract
Description 583 -> 231 chars and body 854 -> 519 words. Deletes the
neuledge-context boundary clause outright: commit 6146120 deleted that
skill and no skill has owned MCP-server installation since. That was the
last dangling routing target in the corpus.

Removes META.md, which file-structure.md:20 forbids at a skill root. Its
when: field duplicated the description and its references: entry pointed
at .agents/skills/context7-mcp/SKILL.md, which does not exist.

Restores two rules a clean-context audit found had lost their force: the
starting-URLs branch in step 3, which the retrofit had reduced to a
condition with no behaviour, and the references/file-format.md pointer at
step 6. The second matters downstream -- validate-provenance.sh parses
sources.md with anchored regexes and check 8 short-circuits silently when
the Status field is absent, so a sources.md written from step 6 alone
broke the provenance chain with no error anywhere.

Rewrites steps 4-5 as serial WebFetch reads. They mandated spawning
subagents that allowed-tools never granted; no tool was added because the
name differs across the three compile targets. Tracked as #116.

Updates the two test pins and the eval case that asserted the dead route.

Refs #99
2026-08-30 15:06:23 +00:00

3.9 KiB

name, description, metadata, allowed-tools, model
name description metadata allowed-tools model
research Use when the user wants a tool, library, or API researched from canonical documentation into structured per-topic reference markdown files. Not documentation written from existing code or specs -> `write-docs`. Not a bug or incident -> `diagnose`.
category
research
WebSearch
WebFetch
Read
Write
mcp__context7__resolve-library-id
mcp__context7__query-docs
sonnet

Gotchas

  • Never infer the output path. A run writes a directory's worth of files, and a guessed destination scatters them through someone's source tree. If the user named no path, stop and ask.
  • Write nothing outside the given output path. A file placed beside the agreed directory is one the user never asked for and will not think to look for.
  • Never write an empty topic file. A stub troubleshooting.md reads downstream as researched and closed.
  • A Context7 response that is a "no results" message, a redirect notice, or header-only boilerplate is not coverage. A topic area counts as covered only when the response carries at least one substantive paragraph.

Step 1 — Scope against the working directory

Search for existing use of the topic — imports, config files, version pins, reference files already written — and narrow the research to what is missing: the version actually in use, the topics not yet documented.

Read references/topics.md before narrowing, for the default topic list.

Step 2 — Resolve against Context7

If the topic is a library, framework, or API and the user gave no starting URLs, call resolve-library-id with the topic name and the user's full question — match quality depends on the question, not the bare name — then query-docs once per default topic area. Record each response as a source with slug context7-<library-slug>, and mark which topic areas it covered — those skip the web reads at step 4.

If the library does not resolve, or the user gave starting URLs, go to step 3. Explicit URLs are a source choice; do not second-guess them with a resolution attempt.

Step 3 — Discover sources

If the user gave starting URLs, skip discovery: those URLs are the source list and go straight to step 4.

Otherwise, for every topic area Context7 did not cover, websearch for canonical documentation — llms.txt, official developer docs, and API references ahead of tutorials or blog posts. Collect three to five candidate URLs before reading any of them.

If nothing usable comes back, stop and report what was searched, then ask for starting URLs rather than settling for tutorials.

Step 4 — Read the sources

WebFetch each URL in turn. No subagent tool is granted here, so the reads are serial and every fetched page lands in this context: reduce each page to notes by topic area, plus the links worth deepening, before fetching the next one.

Step 5 — Deepen

WebFetch the links worth following, still one at a time and still reducing each page to notes. Stop a branch once its content turns repetitive or leaves the topic, and cap the whole step at roughly ten additional pages — serial reads make that cap a real budget, not a formality.

Step 6 — Write

Merge every set of notes, Context7 and web alike, by topic area. Read references/file-format.md, then write, in the output path:

  • <topic>.md for each topic area that has content, default or custom
  • sources.md, always, one section per source in the schema that file gives — URL, description, contributing files, and status — including sources that yielded nothing, marked no content extracted

Spell the sources.md field names exactly as references/file-format.md gives them. The downstream provenance validator matches them literally; prose in their place parses as nothing, and the check passes having verified nothing.

If no topic area has content, write nothing at all, sources.md included, and report what was searched. A directory of empty files is worse than an honest miss.