research skill
Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.
Is the research skill safe?
Clean: nothing in its files matched our rules. We read 2 files in the folder on 2026-11-01.
No findings.
Install the research skill
A skill is a folder. Copy it into your agent's skills folder and the agent loads it when the task matches its description.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mattpocock/skills.git /tmp/skills mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills cp -r /tmp/skills/skills/engineering/research ~/.claude/skills/research
In the Claude apps, zip the folder and upload it from the Skills settings. The folder on GitHub
The instructions your agent would load
SKILL.md as published, without the frontmatter. Read it on GitHub
Spin up a background agent to do the research, so you keep working while it reads. Start it with a fresh context window.
Its job:
- Investigate the question against primary sources (official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs), not a secondary write-up of them. Follow every claim back to the source that owns it.
- Write the findings to a single Markdown file, citing each claim's source.
- Save it where the repo already keeps such notes; match the existing convention, and if there is none, put it somewhere sensible and say where.
More skills from mattpocock/skills
- Aask-mattAsk which skill or flow fits your situation. A router over the skills in this repo.
- Achief-of-staffPursue a long-running goal in a single session by co-ordinating subagents.
- Aclaude-handoffHand the current conversation off to a fresh background agent that picks up the work immediately.
- Acode-reviewReview the changes since a fixed point (commit, branch, tag, or merge-base) along two axes: Standards (does the code follow this repo's documented coding standards?) and Spec (does the code match what the originating issue/spec asked for?). Runs both reviews in parallel sub-agents and reports them side by side. Use when the user wants to review a branch, a PR, work-in-progress changes, or asks to \"review since X\".
- Acodebase-designShared vocabulary for designing deep modules. Use when the user wants to design or improve a module's interface, find deepening opportunities, decide where a seam goes, make code more testable or AI-navigable, or when another skill needs the deep-module vocabulary.
- Adiagnosing-bugsDiagnosis loop for hard bugs and performance regressions. Use when the user says "diagnose"/"debug this", or reports something broken/throwing/failing/slow.
- Adomain-modelingBuild and sharpen a project's domain model. Use when discussing codebase terminology, writing or editing a GLOSSARY.md, or recording or editing an ADR.
- Agit-guardrails-claude-codeSet up Claude Code hooks to block dangerous git commands (push, reset --hard, clean, branch -D, etc.) before they execute. Use when user wants to prevent destructive git operations, add git safety hooks, or block git push/reset in Claude Code.
- Agrill-meA relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design.
- Agrill-with-docsA relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design, which also creates docs (ADR's and glossary) as we go.
- AgrillingGrill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
- AhandoffCompact the current conversation into a handoff document for another agent to pick up.