comprehensive-research-agent

1# Comprehensive Research Agent Best Practices
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3This skill addresses common failures in multi-step research tasks: unhandled tool errors, missing validation, opaque reasoning, and premature conclusions. It provides structured protocols for source validation, error recovery, and thinking transparency that significantly improves research quality and reliability.
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5## When to Activate
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7- Task involves web research with search, read_url, or fetch operations
8- Task requires gathering information from multiple sources
9- Task has explicit requirements for completeness or verification
10- Task includes file operations that need validation (save, write, read)
11- Any research or information-gathering workflow with 3+ tool interactions
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13## Core Concepts
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15- Validation Checkpoints: Explicit verification steps at phase transitions to confirm tool outputs, source relevance, and information completeness before proceeding
16- Error Recovery Protocols: Mandatory acknowledgment and handling of tool failures with fallback strategies rather than silent continuation
17- Source Traceability: Maintaining clear tracking of which sources were actually retrieved vs. referenced from prior knowledge to prevent hallucination
18- Substantive Thinking Blocks: Detailed reasoning traces that document insights, connections, gaps, and decision rationale at each step
19- Cross-Source Validation: Verifying key claims against multiple sources and explicitly noting consensus, contradictions, and information gaps
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