Conduct "persistable, traceable, and expandable" research for long-form technical writing.
When to use
- Writing white papers, orange papers, complete tutorials
- The topic spans a wide range and cannot be written from memory
- Need to distinguish official facts, author judgments, and community experience
- More chapters will be added later, and you do not want to redo the research every time
Workflow
1. Create the research file first
Under research/ , create the topic file first, then start searching.
Suggested naming:
research/<topic>-official-research-YYYY-MM-DD.mdresearch/<topic>-source-map-YYYY-MM-DD.md
2. First collect sources that can serve as anchors
Priority is fixed:
- Official documentation
- Official changelog / official blog / official solution brief
- Official GitHub repository
- Official partner materials
- Community discussions or open-source tools
For Cloudflare, prioritize:
https://developers.cloudflare.com/<product>/index.mdhttps://developers.cloudflare.com/<product>/llms.txthttps://developers.cloudflare.com/<product>/llms-full.txt
Cloudflare documentation already explicitly warns AI agents not to prioritize ingesting HTML.
3. Turn every piece of information into an "evidence ledger"
Record at least these 6 columns:
| Claim | Source | Date | Tier | Confidence | Planned use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What this fact is | Link | Date retrieved | Official/community | High/medium/low | Which chapter it is used in |
4. Separate writing threads from factual threads
Research notes should contain at least two layers:
- Fact layer: facts that can be cited and cross-verified
- Narrative layer: why this fact matters to readers, and which part of the book it fits in
5. Handle China chapters separately
Anything involving the Chinese network environment must be divided into three categories and not mixed together:
- Official product capabilities
- Compliance and delivery boundaries
- Community workaround practices
In particular, "official China Network" and "community preferred nodes/preferred IPs" must be kept separate.
Output standard
A qualified research note contains at least:
- Research objectives
- Key questions
- Confirmed facts
- Questions still to be confirmed
- Source list
- Chapter mapping suggestions
Failure signals
- Wrote a lot of words, but there are no source links
- Only recorded conclusions, not original sources
- Wrote community experience as official promises
- For China scenarios, only discussed "how it feels," not ICP, product availability, and partner boundaries