Approach
- Start = decision to answer + relevant scope + settled constraints + required freshness. Reuse answers already available.
- Coverage = derive relevant questions from the problem and authoritative sources before evaluating options. User-named tools and questions are the minimum, not the whole investigation.
- Evidence = repository source for local behavior; official docs/source/changelogs for external contracts; issues, Reddit and other community reports for discovery and practical counterexamples.
- Independence = search by the problem as well as named solutions; inspect credible alternatives and evidence against the preferred answer where they could change the decision.
- Claims = distinguish documented capability, locally observed behavior, inference and unknown. Missing evidence does not establish that a capability is absent.
- Proportion = investigate what can change the answer; no fixed search quota, mandatory report or unrelated audit.
- Scope = reuse existing task authorization; research alone adds no permission for installation, implementation or external writes. Continue useful independent investigation when one source is unavailable.
Routes
Read each reference whose question is part of the task; skip unrelated routes.
flowchart LR
Q{Question} -->|Repository behavior / impact| C[Codebase]
Q -->|Options / overlap / sufficiency| O[Comparison]
Q -->|Current external claim| E[External evidence]
Q -->|Library / API contract| L[Library and API]
Q -->|Failure / remedy| F[Troubleshooting]
click C "references/codebase.md"
click O "references/comparison.md"
click E "references/external.md"
click L "references/library-api.md"
click F "references/troubleshooting.md"
Completion
- Before concluding, revisit the original question and derived coverage: each material item has evidence, a reason it does not apply, or an explicit unknown and its consequence.
- Resolve material contradictions by source authority, version and applicability; keep unresolved disagreements visible.
- Claim sufficiency only for the stated scope. Name meaningful remaining gaps and explain why they are acceptable or prevent a recommendation.
- Stop when remaining investigation is unlikely to change the decision, or the missing evidence and next useful check are clear. Do not promise exhaustive certainty.
- Answer first, cite decisive sources beside claims, and explain tradeoffs and limits. Use a compact comparison table when it helps; do not force fixed report sections.
- Record accepted decisions in the existing decision file when requested. Keep proposals and unknowns separate; create reusable notes only when requested or needed by subsequent work.