meta-research

Topics in the source

• Meta-Research — Disciplined Multi-Source Research
• How it differs from a quick research router
• The pipeline (9 phases)
• Core mechanisms
• Output structure
• When to use
• Anti-Patterns
• Cross-References

Turn "research this topic" into an auditable, reusable investigation instead of a one-shot wall of text. The output is a folder you can return to in a month: every claim traces to a specific source file, the plan documents why each choice was made, and a refresh protocol lets you update it later without re-running everything. This is the heavy, methodical end of research. It is not a fast overview — it is the workflow you reach for when getting the answer wrong costs more than the tokens spent getting it right. A router-style research skill (keyword-classify → delegate → short sequential search → markdown brief) is optimal when you need an answer fast and the decision risk is low. meta-research is the opposite trade: it pays for rigor. Use it when the answer feeds a strategy, an irreversible decision, a published artifact, or a hypothesis you need to actually test — situations where a shallow fallback would be a liability. Concretely, meta-research adds what a fast overview does not: falsifiable hypotheses up front, parallel sub-agent fan-out across many channels, triangulation with explicit source-type diversity, a mandatory adversarial pass, per-source files with verbatim quotes,

This is an excerpt. Refer to the complete source and its current requirements.