SkillHub

Skills mattpocock skills Engineering workflow

research

Use it when:
You need facts about an API, library or topic checked against their source, without stopping your work.
It does:
Starts a background agent that reads primary sources: official docs, source code, specs and first-party APIs.
You get:
One Markdown file in your repo, with a source cited for each claim.
Needs:
An agent that can run subagents in the background.

Skill 7 of 24 in the Engineering workflow bundle, after domain-modeling and before handoff.

TL;DR

It hands the reading to a background agent, so you and the main agent keep working. That agent investigates the question against primary sources, such as official docs, source code, specs and first-party APIs, rather than second-hand write-ups, and follows each claim back to the source that owns it. The findings go into a single Markdown file with a citation for each claim, saved in the folder where your repo keeps similar notes; if there's none, it picks a place and tells you where.

Summarizes the skill at 5beb35b. Its SKILL.md has changed by 7 words since.

npx skills add https://github.com/mattpocock/skills --skill research

skills.sh pageSource on GitHubAll skills from mattpocock/skills

Total Downloads
782,612 on skills.sh, Nov 9, 2026
Repo stars
318,714 mattpocock/skills
First seen
Jul 2, 2026 on skills.sh
Weekly Downloads
31K
-19% over the 8 weeks to Nov 9
Weekly values
Week toInstalls
Sep 2138,186
Sep 2834,526
Oct 535,076
Oct 1244,719
Oct 1937,348
Oct 2633,920
Nov 234,879
Nov 930,995
Category
category:writing

Articles, docs, internal comms, research write-ups and prose that doesn't read as generated.
Type
type:workflow

A multi-step process the agent follows: interview, debug, run a TDD loop, review.
Effect
effect:local

Its own steps create or change files, git state or local tools.
Needs
needs:subagents

Relies on the agent being able to spawn subagents.
Publisher
by:community

Everyone else. Unverified vendor claims default to community.
Topics
researchdocs-writing

SKILL.md

From mattpocock/skills at a496f55. Checked daily, last changed Oct 30, 2026.

Frontmatter
name: research
description: Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.

Spin up a background agent to do the research, so you keep working while it reads. Start it with a fresh context window.

Its job:

  1. Investigate the question against primary sources (official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs), not a secondary write-up of them. Follow every claim back to the source that owns it.
  2. Write the findings to a single Markdown file, citing each claim's source.
  3. Save it where the repo already keeps such notes; match the existing convention, and if there is none, put it somewhere sensible and say where.