deep-research

Deep Research

Comprehensive research and discovery before building something new. Instead of jumping straight into code from training data, this skill goes wide and deep — local exploration, web research, competitor analysis, ecosystem signals, future-casting — and produces a research brief that makes the actual build 10x more productive.

Depth Levels

The difference is scope of ambition, not just time.

Depth	Purpose	Scope
focused	Answer a specific question	One decision: "CodeMirror vs ProseMirror?" — targeted search, local scan, 1-2 comparisons. Produces a 1-page recommendation.
wide	Understand the space	Landscape for a new product or feature. Competitors, ecosystem, user needs, architecture options. Enough to write a spec.
deep	Plan a major build	Leave no stone unturned. Everything in wide PLUS library/component research, plugin ecosystems, GitHub issues mining, community sentiment, future-casting, technical deep-dives on every decision. Enough to drive weeks of coding.

Default: wide

Workflow

1. Understand the Intent

Ask the user:

• What are you building? (one sentence)
• Why? What problem does it solve? Who's it for?
• Constraints? Stack preferences, budget, timeline, must-haves?
• Existing work? Any projects to build on? Repos to look at?

If the user gives a brief prompt ("obsidian replacement on cloudflare"), that's enough — fill in the gaps through research.

2. Local Exploration

Scan the user's machine for relevant prior work:

# Find related projects by name/keyword
ls ~/Documents/ | grep -i "KEYWORD"

# Read CLAUDE.md of related projects for architecture context
find ~/Documents -maxdepth 2 -name "CLAUDE.md" -exec grep -l "KEYWORD" {} \;

# Check for reusable patterns, schemas, components
find ~/Documents -maxdepth 3 -name "schema.ts" -o -name "ARCHITECTURE.md" | head -20

For each related project found:

• Read CLAUDE.md (stack, architecture, gotchas)
• Check for reusable code (schemas, components, utilities, configs)
• Note what worked well and what didn't (from git history, TODO comments)