deep-research

Deep Research

Research the problem thoroughly before writing code. Understand what's known, what's been tried, and what approaches exist.

When to Use

• Starting a new task or problem
• Stuck after multiple evals without improvement
• Pivoting to a fundamentally different approach
• The problem involves domain-specific knowledge you're unfamiliar with

Notes Directory Structure

notes/
├── index.md              ← table of contents for research/ and experiments/
├── raw/                  ← saved web pages, paper excerpts (immutable, never edit)
├── research/             ← your synthesized findings (link back to raw/)
│   └── _coverage.md      ← the research coverage ledger (dimensions × covered/partial/missing)
└── experiments/          ← eval reflections and results (written by reflect heartbeat)

Process

1. Understand the Problem — and Map the Research Space

Read the task description and key files. Identify what's being optimized, what the constraints are, and what makes it hard. Check coral log and {shared_dir}/notes/ for prior work.

Then decompose the problem into 4–8 research dimensions — the distinct things a team would need to understand to win this task. Derive them from the task, don't pull them from a fixed list. Useful starting prompts (not a required set): prior art / SOTA methods, mechanism or theory, implementation / libraries, the evaluation & grader surface, failure modes, adjacent fields. Drop the ones that don't apply; add task-specific ones that do.

Record them in the coverage ledger at {shared_dir}/notes/research/_coverage.md — the team's map of what's been researched and what hasn't. If it doesn't exist, create it with every dimension missing; if it does, read it first and target the gaps rather than re-covering what's done:

# Research Coverage — <task name>
<!-- Owned by the research team. Update on every research pass. Dimensions are
     derived from THIS task, not a fixed list. Status: covered | partial | missing -->

| Dimension (what to understand)  | Status  | Note                                | Last touched |
|---------------------------------|---------|-------------------------------------|--------------|
| Prior art / SOTA methods        | missing | —                                   | —            |
| Failure modes of approach X     | missing | —                                   | —            |
| Evaluation surface / grader     | missing | —                                   | —            |