research-design-helper

Stage 3a (sharp problem framing) and front-of-Stage 4 (model design) helper. Part of the research-hub skill pack — works alongside Zotero, Obsidian, and NotebookLM workflows but does not require any of them. Domain-agnostic Socratic guide that walks a researcher through 5 short segments and saves the result as .research/design_brief.md.

The skill does not invent your research question or model design. Like research-context-compressor, it leaves blanks rather than guess. Its value is structured prompting: forcing you to articulate what you'd otherwise leave implicit, before you spend weeks coding.

When to use

Trigger phrases:

• "Frame this research question."
• "Design my study before I start coding."
• "Help me think through what model to build."
• "Sharpen my hypothesis."
• "Walk me through the design."
• "Build a design brief."

Not for:

• Writing actual model code (that's the user's work, optionally with codex-delegate for boilerplate).
• Project context manifests (that's research-context-compressor).
• Literature comparison (that's literature-triage-matrix).
• Manuscript writing (that's academic-writing-skills).

Inputs

In priority order:

1. .research/project_manifest.yml if it exists — for project context (research_question may already be partially filled).
2. .research/topic_dossier.gaps.yml if it exists — Stage 2 handoff from gap-to-topic (plugin v0.3.12+). Read only the chosen gaps[] entry plus the top-level open_questions[], NOT the full file. The chosen entry is identified by verdict: conditional-go (or verdict: go); the workflow §0 step pre-fills segment 1 (RQ) from gaps[].statement and segment 5 (risks) from open_questions[] + the specific concern hinted by gaps[].feasibility. This satisfies the conversational-skill rule below — no whole-corpus scan, only one structured handoff record.
3. .research/design_brief.md if it exists — for refresh, not first-run.
4. .research/literature_matrix.md if it exists — for prior-art context when discussing identifiability.
5. The user's free-text answers during the conversation.

Do NOT scan code, data, or PDFs. This is a conversational skill.

Workflow

§0 — Detect Stage 2 handoff (gap-to-topic)

Before starting the Socratic dialog, check whether .research/topic_dossier.gaps.yml exists.

• If absent → behave exactly as before (skip to the 5-segment table below; no regression for users who run this skill standalone).
• If present → filter gaps[] to entries with verdict in {conditional-go, go} (no-go verdicts are out of scope for Stage 3a; the user already decided not to pursue them). Then:
  • Filtered list has exactly one entry → that's the chosen candidate. Auto-pre-fill:
    • Segment 1 (RQ) ← write gaps[].statement verbatim into the Sharpened RQ field, replacing the template's _TODO_ placeholder. Do not add any _PRE-FILL_-style annotation inside the file content — the chat message below is where you signal "this is pre-fill, sharpen me". Keeping the file content clean means segment 1 dialog can simply overwrite the statement with the sharpened RQ; no later cleanup step is needed. The Falsification condition and Smallest answerable version sub-fields stay _TODO_ — those only get filled during segment 1 dialog.
    • Segment 5 (Risk register) ← one row per entry in open_questions[], plus a row for the specific concern indicated by gaps[].feasibility (e.g. feasible-with-effort → a "binding constraint" risk row).
    • Tell the user (chat message, not in the file): "I pre-filled segment 1 (RQ) from gaps[<id>].statement and segment 5 (risks) from open_questions[] + the feasibility: <value> hint. Segment 1's Sharpened RQ is a starting point — segment 1 dialog will sharpen it into a falsifiable form. Review and revise as we walk through."
  • Filtered list has 2+ entries → ask the user "Which candidate are we designing for?" before pre-filling. Use the user's answer as the chosen gaps[] entry. Do not assume.
  • Filtered list is empty (every gap is no-go) → tell the user "No viable candidate in this dossier — every gap is no-go. Nothing for Stage 3a to frame." and stop. Do NOT proceed to the 5-segment dialog on a topic the dossier rejected.
• Segments 2 (mechanism), 3 (identifiability), 4 (validation) are NEVER pre-filled. The .gaps.yml doesn't carry that material; pre-filling those segments with non-content corrupts the Socratic dialog. Leave them blank → _TODO_ until the segment runs.
• Provenance. When you write .research/design_brief.md, fill the frontmatter source: field with topic_dossier.gaps.yml#<gap-id> (e.g. topic_dossier.gaps.yml#G2) and the gap_verdict: field with a frozen snapshot of verdict + the first 60 chars of verdict_reason. This makes the brief self-contained — a future reader sees which dossier candidate this design was framed for.

§1 to §5 — the 5 Socratic segments

Run the 5 Socratic segments in order, one at a time. For each, ask the listed questions, capture the user's answer, then save verbatim to the corresponding section of .research/design_brief.md. If the user can't answer a segment yet, write _TODO: <reason>_ and move on; do not fabricate.

Segments + their prompts: references/socratic-segments.md.

| # | Segment | What it produces | |---|---|---| | 1 | Research question sharpening | falsifiable RQ + falsification condition | | 2 | Expected mechanism | causal chain + uncertainty annotations | | 3 | Identifiability check | discriminating condition + confounders + missing-data plan | | 4 | Validation plan | metric + baseline + negative control | | 5 | Risk register | 3–5 risks each with early-warning + mitigation |

Output: .research/design_brief.md

Use the template at references/design_brief_template.md (sibling file in this skill). Fill the 5 sections with the user's answers verbatim. Frontmatter is required:

project: <from project_manifest.yml or asked at start>
last_updated: <ISO date>
stage: design
status: draft     # draft | reviewed | locked

If the file already exists, update don't replace: keep human-edited sections intact, only fill blanks unless the user explicitly says "regenerate from scratch".

Provenance protection (v0.3.12+). If the existing design_brief.md has frontmatter source: topic_dossier.gaps.yml#<old-id> and a different gaps[] entry is now being chosen (different id, OR .gaps.yml generated: date differs), ASK the user before refreshing — do not silently overwrite provenance. Phrasing: "This brief was originally framed for <old-id> (<old-verdict>). The current .gaps.yml chooses <new-id> (<new-verdict>). Refresh and replace the provenance, or keep the old brief and start a new one?"

Placeholder marker (v0.3.15+). When any segment is filled with test-fit / dogfood placeholder content (e.g. an AI-generated stub written to exercise the Stage 3a → 3b wire without a real Socratic dialog), record those segment numbers in the frontmatter placeholder_segments: list. Example: placeholder_segments: [2, 3, 4] means segments 2–4 are placeholders, not from the researcher's actual answers. Downstream tools should refuse to gate real research on a brief with non-empty placeholder_segments. When all 5 segments are filled by genuine Socratic dialog, leave the list empty ([]). This pattern was added after the v0.3.12 dogfood, where segments 2–4 were written as test-fit content to validate the wire — a future reader needs a machine-checkable signal that those segments aren't advisor-ready.

After saving, print a short report:

[research-design-helper]
  Wrote: .research/design_brief.md
  Sections completed: 4 / 5 (Risk register marked _TODO_ — circle back)
  Strongest spot: Identifiability check — clear discrimination via negative control.
  Weakest spot: Validation plan — baseline not yet specified.
  Suggested next: refine the validation baseline, then re-run with "regenerate from scratch" to lock the brief.

Generate .docx (optional, plugin v0.3.14+)

After writing .research/design_brief.md, an optional Word version can be generated via the sister script at scripts/brief_to_docx.js. The .docx is a convenience for sharing the brief with advisors / committee members who prefer Word — it is NOT part of the contracted Stage 3a output and is not consumed by downstream skills (Stage 3b reads design_brief.md frontmatter + §1 directly).

# From the directory that contains design_brief.md:
node /path/to/skills/research-design-helper/scripts/brief_to_docx.js design_brief --no-toc

# zh-TW variant (auto-selects Microsoft JhengHei):
node /path/to/skills/research-design-helper/scripts/brief_to_docx.js design_brief.zh-TW --no-toc

Prerequisite: npm install -g docx (one-time). The --no-toc flag is recommended for design briefs — they're typically short enough that Word's auto-generated empty TOC field is more distracting than useful.

The script is a near-byte copy of the gap-to-topic scripts/dossier_to_docx.js generator (same Markdown → Word logic, same font auto-selection, same separator-row skip). The dossier's verdict-colour regex is inherited verbatim but does not fire on design brief content — see scripts/README.md for the rationale.

Token-saving behavior

• Don't repeat the user's answers back at length — quote in the written brief, summarize one sentence in chat.
• Don't dump the whole template into the chat — write the file, then report which sections were filled.
• Skip segments the user can't answer; record _TODO_ and move on. The point is not to complete every section in one session — it's to surface the gaps.

What NOT to do

• Do NOT invent the research question. If the user is vague, surface the vagueness; do not fill it in for them.
• Do NOT propose model architectures or technologies. That's Stage 4 implementation work, owned by the user with help from codex-delegate for boilerplate. This skill stops at the spec.
• Do NOT write to .paper/ — that's paper-memory-builder.
• Do NOT touch .research/project_manifest.yml — that's research-context-compressor. The two are complementary; the manifest captures STATE, the brief captures DESIGN INTENT.
• Do NOT skip segments silently. If a segment is blank, the brief must say _TODO_ so future sessions (or the orienter) can flag it.

See also

• references/socratic-segments.md — full prompts for each of the 5 segments
• references/design_brief_template.md — Markdown template for the output file