research-add-items

Research Add Items — Append to the Items List

In-place updates outline.yaml with additional research objects.

Trigger

/research-add-items

Pipeline position

/research-outline → ► /research-add-items ◄ → /research-deep → /research-report

Reachable any time after /research-outline has produced outline.yaml, but most useful before /research-deep so the new items get researched in the same parallel pass.

Workflow

Step 1 — Auto-locate outline

Glob */outline.yaml from the current working directory. Read it to know the existing items (avoid duplicates) and the current execution config.

Step 2 — Gather candidates from two sources

These two sources are gathered sequentially (AskUserQuestion blocks waiting on the user; web search can run in the background after). Do them in this order:

1. AskUserQuestion: "Which items do you want to add? Any specific names?" — capture whatever the user already has in mind.
2. AskUserQuestion: "Should I also run a web-search agent for more candidates?" — if yes, launch a research subagent via the Task tool (subagent_type: general-purpose, run_in_background: true) seeded with the topic, the existing items list, and any items the user named in step 1 (so suggestions don't duplicate).

Step 3 — Merge, deduplicate, confirm

• Combine the user-supplied items and the subagent's suggestions.
• Deduplicate by case-insensitive name match against the existing outline.yaml.
• Show the merged candidate list to the user. AskUserQuestion for which to accept.
• For each accepted item, capture: name (required), category (optional), description (optional, short).

Step 4 — Save update

Append accepted items to outline.yaml, preserving existing structure. Save in place.

Item shape (matches /research-outline)

items:
  - name: <item>
    category: <optional>
    description: <optional, short>

Output

Updated {topic}/outline.yaml — in-place modification, user confirms before save.

Gotchas

• Duplicate detection is case-insensitive name match only. GPT-4 and GPT 4 (different by one character) are not detected as duplicates. Eyeball the merged list before saving if you suspect near-duplicates.
• Items added after /research-deep has already run are not auto-researched. You either need to re-run /research-deep (its Step 2 resume check will skip already-completed items and only fan out the new ones), or research the new items manually.
• The web-search subagent operates outside the conversation context. Hand it the topic AND the current items list explicitly, so its proposals don't repeat what's already there.
• outline.yaml.execution.batch_size controls how many deep agents /research-deep runs in parallel. If you add many items at once, you may want to bump batch_size here too — but that's outside this skill's scope; edit outline.yaml directly or re-run /research-outline's Step 4 prompts.