Use when Phase 1 (research-direction-exploration) is complete and G1 gate has passed — subjects the research problem to adversarial defense-style questioning, classifies project intent, re-evaluates venue target, and produces a final feasibility ruling before any method design begins.
Use when implementing any experiment, analysis, or computational task — enforces the HYPOTHESIZE-BASELINE-EXPERIMENT-VERIFY-INTERPRET cycle and reproducibility requirements.
Use when a user expresses research intent but has not yet identified a specific research direction, completed a literature review, or confirmed resource readiness — covers Phase 1 from topic discovery through G1 gate.
Use when about to claim ANY research result status — requires running verification, reading full output, and providing evidence before making claims; always active, no exceptions.
Use when starting any conversation - establishes how to find and use research skills, requiring Skill tool invocation before ANY response including clarifying questions.
Use when starting research work that needs isolation from current workspace or before executing experiments - creates isolated git worktrees with smart directory selection and safety verification.
Use at every gate checkpoint and periodically during experiments to verify that project progress matches the target venue's requirements in terms of experiment scale, novelty depth, and evidence quality.