aifgrouplaos/ai-skills/evidence-research

Evidence Research

Overview

Use this skill to turn a user question into a sourced answer that shows its evidence trail. The goal is accuracy over speed: search broadly enough to find the best available sources, verify claims against origin sources, and make uncertainty visible.

Workflow

1. Clarify intent before searching.

• If the user already gave a concrete research question, audience, scope, and desired output format, restate the target briefly and continue.
• If the prompt is broad, ambiguous, high-stakes, goal-sensitive, or could branch into several different research products, use $grilling before searching.
• With $grilling, ask the current frontier of user decisions: what decision the research should support, required scope, acceptable source types, output format, depth, deadline/freshness needs, exclusions, and confidence bar.
• Do not ask the user for facts that can be searched. Ask for preferences, intent, constraints, and decisions.
• Begin research only after the user confirms the shared understanding.

1. Restate the research target as one or more answerable questions.

• Preserve the user's exact constraints: dates, geography, jurisdiction, audience, technical version, budget, or source preferences.
• Ask a clarifying question only when a missing constraint would make the answer materially misleading. Otherwise, state the assumption and continue.

1. Search in passes.

• Start with broad queries to map the topic and vocabulary.
• Run targeted queries for primary sources, official docs, datasets, papers, standards, laws, changelogs, statements, or original announcements.
• Run follow-up queries for disagreement, criticism, limitations, and recent updates.
• For time-sensitive questions, search explicitly for the latest date/version and compare publication dates.

1. Prefer origin sources.

• Use official documentation, original papers, standards bodies, government pages, company announcements, public filings, repository release notes, datasets, or direct transcripts when available.
• Use reputable secondary sources to discover leads, context, or competing interpretations; do not let them replace origin sources for core claims.
• For niche claims, find at least two independent sources or mark the claim as weak.

1. Build an evidence log while researching.

• Track source title, author/organization, publication or update date, URL, source type, and the specific claim it supports.
• Note whether the source is primary, secondary, commentary, dataset, or user-generated.
• Record conflicts between sources instead of smoothing them away.

1. Synthesize only after source review.

• Separate what the sources establish from your inference.
• Prefer precise claims over broad summaries.
• Include caveats for stale sources, limited samples, missing data, ambiguous definitions, or conflicting evidence.

1. Return a source-backed answer.

• Lead with the direct answer or strongest finding.
• Cite each important factual claim with a link to the source.
• Include a short evidence section listing the most important sources and why they matter.
• Include a confidence note when evidence is incomplete, contradictory, or rapidly changing.

Source Standards

• Use the search/browsing tools available in the current environment when the answer depends on external facts, recent information, primary-source verification, or exact citations.
• Open and inspect sources before relying on them; search-result snippets are not evidence.
• Prefer sources with stable URLs, clear dates, named organizations/authors, and direct access to the underlying claim.
• Avoid citing low-quality summaries when a primary source is available.
• For legal, medical, financial, safety, or security topics, cite authoritative sources and clearly bound the answer as informational rather than professional advice.
• Do not fabricate citations, dates, quotes, or source contents. If a source cannot be accessed, say so.

Output Pattern

Use this shape unless the user requested a different format:

**Answer**
[Concise answer with citations.]
 
**Evidence**
-[Source title](URL) - source type, date, why it matters.
-[Source title](URL) - source type, date, why it matters.
 
**Notes**
[Assumptions, conflicts, limits, and confidence.]

For larger research tasks, add:

**Method**
[Search passes performed, key query families, and inclusion/exclusion choices.]