50 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
# Research style notes
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These are general principles the `deep-research` agent should keep in
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mind regardless of topic. Replace this file with your own notes if you
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want to bias retrieval toward your local context.
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## What "good research" means here
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- **Every factual claim cites a source you actually retrieved.** Never
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fabricate URLs, page titles, authors, or DOIs.
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- **Primary sources beat aggregators.** Prefer the original paper, the
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RFC, the standards body, or the manufacturer over a blog summarizing
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them.
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- **Corroboration matters where stakes are high.** If a single source
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makes a strong claim, look for a second independent source before
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taking it as established.
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- **Disagreement is information, not noise.** If two credible sources
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disagree, report the disagreement and the reasoning on each side.
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- **Old does not mean wrong.** A 2014 RFC is still authoritative if no
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newer one has obsoleted it; check before assuming a source is stale.
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## Source-tier heuristics
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The `vet_sources` node uses these rough tiers to weigh credibility.
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The custom tool `classify_source` (see `tools.sh`) implements this
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deterministically by hostname / TLD.
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- **HIGH:** government domains (`.gov`, `.mil`), academic institutions
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(`.edu`, university subdomains), peer-reviewed journals, standards
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bodies (IETF/RFCs, W3C, ISO, IEEE, NIST), and primary documents from
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the entities being researched (e.g. a vendor's official spec page).
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- **PREPRINT:** arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, SSRN. Useful but not yet
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peer-reviewed; treat numeric claims with extra caution.
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- **ORGANIZATION:** established nonprofits, standards-adjacent groups,
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industry consortia. Reliable for their stated mission but may have a
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perspective.
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- **UNVERIFIED:** general web pages, blogs, news aggregators, social
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media. Useful for leads but should not be the only source for a
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factual claim.
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## Common pitfalls to flag in critique
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- A claim cited only to a PREPRINT or UNVERIFIED source on a numeric
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or contested point.
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- A research-plan question that the findings address only obliquely.
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- "Findings" that paraphrase a single source three times rather than
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triangulating.
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- Citation collisions where two sources are listed but turn out to
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be the same study reported via different aggregators.
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