Agentic Research — Shared Team Playbook

This is the shared playbook loaded by ALL agents in the agentic research system. It defines the protocols, quality standards, and conventions that ensure consistent, high-quality research across the orchestrator and all specialist agents.

Every agent MUST read and follow this playbook before beginning work.

Team Structure

Communication Protocol

Message Format

All inter-agent messages MUST use this structure:

## [Agent Name] [Message Type] (Batch N)

### [Section 1 Header]
- Item 1
- Item 2

### [Section 2 Header]
- Item 1

### Summary
Brief summary of key points.

Message Types

URL Report Format (Specialists -> Orchestrator)

## [Agent] URL Report (Batch N)

### Key URLs Discovered:
- https://url1.com - [Description] - Tier: [Primary/Academic/Official/Industry/Community]
- https://url2.com - [Description] - Tier: [tier]

### Documentation Sites (recommend for Firecrawl):
- https://docs.example.com - Full documentation for X

### Key Findings:
- Finding 1
- Finding 2

Source Relay Format (Orchestrator -> NotebookLM)

Add these N sources to the notebook:
- https://url1.com — [Description] — Tier: Primary
- https://url2.com — [Description] — Tier: Academic

Completion Signal Format

[Agent] specialist complete. Findings written to findings/[agent]-findings.md.
[Key stats: searches, URLs, pages, etc.]
Key gaps: [list gaps].

Source Quality Tiers

All agents MUST classify discovered sources using these tiers. The orchestrator uses tiers to prioritize which URLs to relay to NotebookLM.

Tier Prioritization Rules

1. •Primary + Academic: Always relay to NotebookLM
2. •Official: Always relay to NotebookLM (essential for technical accuracy)
3. •Industry: Relay if relevant to key questions and not redundant
4. •Community: Only relay if contains unique insights not found in higher tiers
5. •News: Rarely relay -- only if contains exclusive information

Source Limit Management

• •NotebookLM limit: 300 sources (paid plan), 50 (standard)
• •Target: 200 excellent sources > 300 mediocre ones
• •Track count: Orchestrator maintains running total
• •Stop early: If quality sources are exhausted before hitting limit

See references/source-quality-tiers.md for detailed tier classification examples.

Parallel Safety Rules

NotebookLM Commands

CRITICAL: ALL agents MUST follow these rules.

• •ALWAYS use -n <notebook_id> or --notebook <notebook_id> flags
• •NEVER use notebooklm use <id> -- it modifies shared state and is unsafe in parallel workflows
• •Use full UUIDs in automation to avoid ambiguity from partial IDs
• •Use --new flag on ask commands when switching topic areas (avoids conversation ID conflicts)

File System Safety

• •Each specialist writes to its own findings file (no conflicts):
  • •ExaAI: findings/exa-findings.md
  • •Firecrawl: findings/firecrawl-findings.md
  • •NotebookLM: findings/notebooklm-findings.md
• •Only the orchestrator writes to report.md and sources/sources.md
• •Artifacts are downloaded to artifacts/ (NotebookLM specialist only)

Team Communication Safety

• •All messages go through SendMessage tool (not shared files)
• •Messages are automatically delivered -- no polling needed
• •Each agent maintains its own state independently
• •The orchestrator is the only agent that reads all findings files (during synthesis)

Output Formatting Standards

Findings Files

All specialist findings files MUST include:

1. •Research Topic -- exact topic from brief
2. •Methodology Summary -- what was done, key stats
3. •Key Findings -- organized by topic area, with inline source URLs
4. •Contradictions -- where sources disagree (do NOT smooth over)
5. •Gaps -- what couldn't be found or needs more investigation

Source Citation Format

Inline citations use markdown links:

According to the official documentation [Source Title](https://url), the framework supports...

When citing multiple sources:

Multiple sources confirm this approach [Source A](url1), [Source B](url2), though [Source C](url3) disagrees.

URL Reporting Format

When reporting URLs, always include:

• •Full URL (no shortlinks)
• •Brief description (what the page contains)
• •Quality tier classification

- https://docs.example.com/guide - Comprehensive setup guide - Tier: Official

Error Handling Protocol

Severity Levels

Error Reporting Format

## Error Report

**Agent:** [name]
**Severity:** [Warning/Error/Critical]
**Error:** [description]
**Action Taken:** [what you tried]
**Impact:** [what's affected]
**Suggested Fix:** [if known]

Recovery Strategies

1. •Rate limits: Exponential backoff (30s -> 2min -> skip)
2. •Auth failures: Run diagnostic commands, report to orchestrator
3. •Tool crashes: Retry once, then report
4. •Network issues: Wait 1 minute, retry, then report
5. •Source not found: Log, skip, continue with other sources

Persistent Memory Conventions

All agents write session learnings to ~/.claude/memory/:

Memory Entry Format

## Session: YYYY-MM-DD -- <topic-slug>

**What worked:**
- [insight 1]
- [insight 2]

**What didn't work:**
- [issue 1]

**Lessons learned:**
- [lesson 1]

Memory Usage

• •Read memory at session start to leverage past learnings
• •Write memory at session end with insights from current session
• •Keep entries concise -- focus on actionable insights
• •Update or remove entries that turn out to be wrong

Cross-References

This playbook is used by:

• •Orchestrator agent: agents/agentic-orchestrator.md
• •ExaAI specialist agent: agents/exa-specialist.md
• •Firecrawl specialist agent: agents/firecrawl-specialist.md
• •NotebookLM specialist agent: agents/notebooklm-specialist.md

Related skills:

• •Orchestration methodology: skills/agentic-research-orchestration/SKILL.md
• •ExaAI search: skills/exa/SKILL.md
• •Firecrawl web scraping: skills/firecrawl/SKILL.md
• •NotebookLM automation: skills/notebooklm/SKILL.md