How to run the research pipelines¶

The desk-research pack ships seven skills. Three multi-skill pipelines compose them into the patterns adopters actually reach for: the survey pipeline for broad questions, the decision pipeline for contested choices, and the archaeology pipeline for "why did we do it this way" questions.

This guide is task-shaped. It assumes you already know what the pack does — if you don't, start with your first research session. For the dry catalogue of every skill, see the reference.

These three pipelines are episodic — one-shot runs that produce an artifact and finish. If your question outlasts one sitting and accumulates a corpus over days or weeks, you want project mode instead: see run a research project and feed it into an RFC, and episodic vs project research for which to reach for.

  survey       broad question, cited synthesis
    /build-outline ──► /source-map ──► /desk-research
    <slug>-outline.md  <slug>-sources.md  <slug>-survey.md  (+ <slug>-counterpoints.md with "go deep")

  decision     contested choice, weigh the positions
    /identify-perspectives ──► /source-map ──► /compare-hypotheses ──► /devils-advocate
    <slug>-perspectives.md     <slug>-sources.md  <slug>-hypotheses.md   <slug>-counterpoints.md

  archaeology  "why did we do it this way?"   (self-contained — no /source-map)
    /decision-archaeology
    <slug>-archaeology.md

Every persisted artifact is named <topic-slug>-<type>.md (shown above as <slug>-… for width) — the topic slug namespaces the investigation so two studies in one directory never collide. The naming scheme is defined in the /desk-research skill body and catalogued in the reference.

Recipe 1 — the survey pipeline¶

Use this when: the question is broad and you need a structured synthesis with cited sources. Example: "what does the field look like for X?"

Invocation sequence:

/build-outline → /source-map → /desk-research (standard or deep)

Expected artifacts:

1. <topic-slug>-outline.md — sub-questions a thorough answer must address.
2. <topic-slug>-sources.md — candidate sources grouped by primacy (primary / secondary / tertiary).
3. <topic-slug>-survey.md — synthesised findings with GRADE-style confidence ratings. Add go deep to also produce <topic-slug>-counterpoints.md.

Degraded-mode example: skipping /build-outline and going straight to /source-map + /desk-research works for narrower questions — the outline-stage decomposition is what makes the sources actually hit the sub-questions. Skip /source-map and /desk-research falls back to its own retriever enumeration, which is fine for casual prompts but produces a thinner source list.

Recipe 2 — the decision pipeline¶

Use this when: the question is contested and you need to compare competing positions with evidence. Example: "should we adopt X approach, or Y, or Z?"

Invocation sequence:

/identify-perspectives → /source-map → /compare-hypotheses → /devils-advocate

Expected artifacts:

1. <topic-slug>-perspectives.md — named camps with core claims and representative voices.
2. <topic-slug>-sources.md — candidates grouped by primacy and by camp (camp- grouping is the decision-pipeline-specific shape).
3. <topic-slug>-hypotheses.md — ACH-style matrix (hypotheses × evidence-for / against), with a ranking.
4. <topic-slug>-counterpoints.md — /devils-advocate against <topic-slug>-hypotheses.md; a per-finding verdict (rating downgrade, or do-not-resolve for an irreducible tension).

Degraded-mode example: if you skip /source-map, then /compare-hypotheses falls back to enumerating hypotheses with the sources it can find inline — it still produces <topic-slug>-hypotheses.md, but the matrix is thinner and [high] ratings will be rare because the triangulation discipline can't be satisfied. The downstream /devils-advocate pass then proposes more downgrades. The pipeline degrades gracefully — it doesn't break.

Recipe 3 — the archaeology pipeline¶

Use this when: the question is "why did we do it this way?" — the artifact trail exists and you need to reconstruct rationale from it.

Invocation sequence:

/decision-archaeology

Just the one skill. /decision-archaeology is self-contained — it does not invoke /source-map or any other research-pack skill, because the source surface for archaeology is time-ordered internal artifacts, and authority is established by an artifact's place in the history rather than by external curation.

Expected artifacts:

1. <topic-slug>-archaeology.md — terminal artifact, chronology, rationale chain, alternatives considered.

Degraded-mode example: if the artifact trail is sparse — the decision was made in a chat archive that no longer exists, the doc was never written — <topic-slug>-archaeology.md will surface alternatives-considered as [inference] rather than cited material. The skill is honest about its evidence gaps; the [inference] tag is the signal that the rationale isn't established, just plausible.

Picking between pipelines¶

When in doubt, start with /desk-research in quick mode — it's the cheapest path and the answer might be enough.

Composing further¶

The pipelines aren't mutually exclusive. After the decision pipeline produces <topic-slug>-hypotheses.md, you might run /decision-archaeology against the leading hypothesis to reconstruct how the team last considered it. After /desk-research standard produces <topic-slug>-survey.md, you might run /devils-advocate standalone against a single finding that surprised you.

The pack is set up so the artifacts compose: each downstream skill documents the upstream artifacts it expects, and what it does when they're absent.