Runs a thorough multi-source research process – decompose the question, gather independent sources, cross-check, synthesize – and delivers a structured, cited brief with confidence levels and gaps.
Runs a thorough multi-source research process - decompose the question, gather independent sources, cross-check, synthesize - and delivers a structured, cited brief with confidence levels and gaps. Use when someone asks "research this topic in depth", "give me everything on X", "what does the evidence say about Y", or needs a broad question answered from secondary sources with citations. Do NOT use for designing a study that collects new data - use primary-research instead; for distilling an already-gathered pile of 20+ sources into themes, use research-synthesis; for verifying one discrete claim, use fact-checker.This is the skill's description: the text your AI reads to decide when the skill applies.
deep-research/SKILL.md
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name: Deep Research
description: Runs a thorough multi-source research process - decompose the question, gather independent sources, cross-check, synthesize - and delivers a structured, cited brief with confidence levels and gaps. Use when someone asks "research this topic in depth", "give me everything on X", "what does the evidence say about Y", or needs a broad question answered from secondary sources with citations. Do NOT use for designing a study that collects new data - use primary-research instead; for distilling an already-gathered pile of 20+ sources into themes, use research-synthesis; for verifying one discrete claim, use fact-checker.
---
# Deep Research
Go wide, then deep: triangulate across independent sources and report what was actually found, including the gaps. The costly failure this skill prevents is the confident brief built on an echo - a dozen articles that all trace to one blog post or one press release, presented as consensus. "Not found" is a legitimate finding; a smooth answer papering over thin evidence is not.
## Inputs to collect
1. The research question, restated until the user confirms it. Ambiguity here multiplies through every later step.
2. What decision or output the research feeds. A brief informing a purchase differs from one informing a publication.
3. Scope boundaries: geography, industry, population, and what is explicitly out of scope.
4. Depth and deadline. Default: 3-6 sub-questions, at least two independent sources per sub-question.
5. Known sources or prior work to build on. Treat supplied sources as leads to appraise, not settled evidence.
Label any assumed scope as an assumption.
## Operating procedure
Order matters: sub-questions must exist before gathering, or the research becomes an unstructured pile shaped by whatever surfaced first.
1. **Frame.** Restate the question and define what a good answer looks like - the form (a number, a ranked list, a causal story) and the bar (how sure it needs to be).
2. **Map.** Decompose into 3-6 sub-questions and research each one, rather than the topic as a blob. If a sub-question splits again, it was two sub-questions.… load the full skill through Skill MeClick to play with sound.