Research (Matt Pocock skill)
Twelve lines doing one thing: spin up a background agent to investigate while you keep working. Its brief is three points. Investigate against primary sources (official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs) rather than a secondary write-up, following each claim back to the source that owns it. Write the findings into a single Markdown file with a citation per claim. Put it where the repo already keeps such notes, and say where if there is no convention.
Strengths
- Primary sources required, with each claim followed back to the source that owns it
- Cited Markdown file output, versioned in the repo: the research outlives the session
- Background agent: you do not block your own context window during the reading
- Follows the repo existing filing convention instead of inventing yet another folder
Limitations
- No verification guardrail: the skill demands the citation, it does not check the citation says what it is made to say
- Background mode depends on the harness: with no background-agent support, you lose its main draw
- The file it produces feeds the thinking, it does not replace it: reading it without a grilling settles nothing
Best for
- Docs or API questions where you want the facts before deciding, without reading yourself
- Sessions where you want to delegate the reading while you build something else
- Teams who want research versioned in the repo rather than lost in a chat