Research Pain Points & Outcomes
Research a specific pain point or desired outcome in AI-assisted development. The goal is to find what tools, techniques, or workflow changes would address it — not to evaluate a pre-chosen tool.
Default Watchlist
When invoked without a specific topic (or with watchlist), research these open questions:
- •How do you keep multiple projects in sync? — Template propagation, shared config, cross-project automation
- •How do you onboard non-technical users? — Entry points, guardrails, how much Claude should explain vs. decide
- •How do you get feedback loops working? — Retros, transcript analysis, automated improvement
- •How do you reduce setup friction? — Scaffolding, one-command project creation, sensible defaults
- •What's changing in the ecosystem? — New capabilities in Claude Code, Codex, community tools, agent frameworks
Steps
- •
Understand the problem: If
$ARGUMENTSis a specific pain point or outcome, start from that. Frame it as a question — "How do I...?" or "What would help with...?" Don't start from a tool name. - •
Spawn a research team: Create an agent team and divide the research into focused angles — by sub-question, source type, or tool category — one teammate per angle. For the watchlist, assign one open question per teammate. Each teammate independently researches their angle (steps 3–6 below), then the team runs a debate round (step 7) before the lead synthesizes (step 8).
- •
Search broadly (each teammate, for their assigned angle):
- •Use
WebSearchto find how people are solving this problem — blog posts, HN discussions, tool docs, community threads - •Use
WebFetchto read the most relevant pages - •Look across categories: Claude Code features, community tools (GSD, Autoclaude, aider, cursor, etc.), workflow patterns, agent frameworks
- •Focus on what's new since the last research — check
research/for existing findings and their dates
- •Use
- •
Assess fit before writing (lead, before teammates write): Determine whether the findings belong in this repo or somewhere else.
Ask yourself:
- •Does this research affect how the metaproject works — templates, skills, conventions, or tool choices that would influence how Claude Code projects are set up?
- •Or is it driven by a personal use case (specific tasks, personal domains like health/finance/networking)?
If it's personal, ask the user where to put it before writing anything:
"This research is specific to [your personal use case]. It doesn't belong in the public metaproject repo. Should I save it to
~/dev/research-notes/instead?"Wait for the user's answer. They may redirect to research-notes, health-tool, personal-finance, or somewhere else.
If it belongs here, teammates write to
research/{YYYY-MM-DD}-{topic-slug}-{angle}.md. - •
Write findings (each teammate, if confirmed to belong here) to
research/{YYYY-MM-DD}-{topic-slug}-{angle}.md.Each finding should include:
- •Problem it addresses — what pain point or outcome does this help with
- •What it is — brief description of the tool, technique, or approach
- •How it works — enough detail to evaluate fit
- •Applicability — which of our projects could benefit and how
- •Effort to adopt — what would need to change (S/M/L)
- •Source URLs — links to the original content
- •
Commit (each teammate) the research file with message:
research: [topic slug] findings - •
Assess actionability (each teammate): For each finding that could improve our projects:
- •Note which projects would benefit
- •Describe what would need to change (skill update, new tool, workflow change)
- •Rate priority (do now / explore later / watch)
- •
Debate (teammates): Share findings with each other and actively challenge each other's conclusions — looking for gaps, contradictions, and overconfident claims. The lead orchestrates the exchange and waits for it to complete before synthesizing.
- •
Synthesize (lead): After the debate round, summarize for the user:
- •What the team found and how it addresses the original problem
- •For single-topic research, consolidate angle files into
research/{YYYY-MM-DD}-{topic-slug}.md - •Recommend specific
/propagateactions if applicable - •Flag anything that needs a user decision