digital-research-engine

Digital Research Engine Router

This router turns a user request into the minimum skill stack required to produce research that is traceable, well-reasoned, and release-ready. It is the entrypoint for the engine, not a replacement for sub-skills.

Non-negotiable foundation

Always load these before research work:

skills/source-evaluation/SKILL.md
skills/source-evaluation/references/evidence-discipline.md
skills/anti-ai-slop/SKILL.md
docs/continuous-improvement/portfolio-kaizen-standard-2026-08.md for every engine or research-product audit, improvement plan, or book-study integration.

All engines may route here for current-source verification. This engine also audits its own research outputs: use skills/00-meta-initialization/references/kaizen-engine-and-product-audit.md, publish the current audit at a maximum of 65/100, and produce a remediation plan targeting 95/100.

Every sub-agent prompt must include the hard-constraint clause from evidence-discipline.md verbatim.

Route by user intent

User intent	Primary skill	Companion skills
Start or scope a research project	`skills/00-meta-initialization/SKILL.md`	`skills/research-orchestration/SKILL.md`, `skills/research-design/SKILL.md`
Plan waves, cohorts, or work allocation	`skills/research-orchestration/SKILL.md`	`skills/agentic-research-operations/SKILL.md`
Search strategy, query design, source discovery	`skills/research-techniques/SKILL.md`	`skills/web-scraping-foundations/SKILL.md`
Source credibility and evidence discipline	`skills/source-evaluation/SKILL.md`	`skills/source-verification/SKILL.md`
Verify URLs, quotes, statistics, archives, citations	`skills/source-verification/SKILL.md`	`tools/verification/source_verifier.py`
OSINT or public-record investigation	`skills/osint-investigation/SKILL.md`	`skills/due-diligence/SKILL.md`, `skills/source-evaluation/SKILL.md`
Corporate due diligence	`skills/due-diligence/SKILL.md`	`skills/online-legal-research/SKILL.md`, `skills/data-quality-pipeline/SKILL.md`
Primary research interviews or field evidence	`skills/primary-research/SKILL.md`	`skills/research-design/SKILL.md`
Data discovery or dataset analysis	`skills/dataset-discovery-and-analysis/SKILL.md`	`skills/data-quality-pipeline/SKILL.md`, `tools/reports/citation_density_dashboard.py`
Academic paper, thesis, dissertation, systematic review	`skills/academic-reporting-standards/SKILL.md`	`skills/academic-writing/SKILL.md`, `docs/source-registers/research-standards-register.md`
Forward-looking judgment, scenario, warning, risk call	`skills/analytic-tradecraft/SKILL.md`	`skills/calibration-and-forecasting/SKILL.md`, `skills/peer-review-loop/SKILL.md`
Executive memo, board brief, consulting report	`skills/executive-communication/SKILL.md`	`skills/critical-reasoning-and-argument/SKILL.md`
Final report or proposal craft	`skills/report-and-proposal-craft/SKILL.md`	`skills/research-output-formats/SKILL.md`, `skills/professional-word-output/SKILL.md`
Word, PDF, Excel, or rendered deliverable	`skills/python-document-generation/SKILL.md`	`skills/professional-word-output/SKILL.md`, chwezi-design-engine engine
Skill authoring or engine extension	`skills/skill-writing/SKILL.md`	`skills/skill-composition-standards/SKILL.md`
Engine or product improvement audit	`skills/00-meta-initialization/references/kaizen-engine-and-product-audit.md`	`skills/source-evaluation/SKILL.md`, `skills/source-verification/SKILL.md`

Running example

Use docs/world-class-exemplars/running-example.md as the shared example across sub-skills: a Chwezi Core Systems research engagement on informal cross-border trade digitisation in East Africa. It includes executive, academic, OSINT, data, and policy variants without relying on invented statistics.

Standard operating sequence

Intake: define audience, decision, research type, output family, risk level, and stop conditions.
Evidence: load source-evaluation and evidence-discipline; assign source tiers at collection time.
Design: choose method, cohorts, search plan, and data needs.
Collection: run waves; log sources, search strings, exclusions, and unresolved gaps.
Verification: run source-verification and the verifier tool before synthesis.
Reasoning: run critical-reasoning and analytic-tradecraft where claims, judgments, or recommendations appear.
Synthesis: build the claim graph, answer-first message, and evidence pack.
Output: use the format skill matching the deliverable and apply anti-slop gates.
Release: run quality gates, citation density dashboard, reviewer notes, and final manifest.

Stop conditions

Stop and ask for clarification when the request lacks the decision/audience, asks for private surveillance, asks for fabricated or unsourced claims, requires current legal/regulatory facts that cannot be verified, or asks to publish a claim whose source trail fails verification.

About this skill