shield_lock
JinDaGe
← Back to skills
extension
Category: Development & EngineeringNo API key required

research-spike

Conducts time-boxed technical investigations, competitive research, or feasibility analysis. Asks clarifying questions upfront and produces a structured markdown report with executive summary. Use for technical spikes, architecture decisions, or evaluating new technologies.

personAuthor: jakexiaohubgithub
open_in_newRepositorydownloadDownload package

Research Spike

Time-boxed technical investigation with structured, citation-backed output.

Use for a spike before adopting unfamiliar technology, an architecture decision record, a comparison of tools or libraries, a feasibility study, a migration or upgrade assessment, or a survey of best practice in a domain.

Modes

| Mode | Output emphasizes | | --- | --- | | Technical spike | Practical findings, code examples, implementation recommendations | | Competitive research | Feature matrices, trade-off analysis, selection criteria | | Feasibility analysis | Constraints, risks, effort factors, go/no-go recommendation |

Upfront Questions

Use AskUserQuestion to settle three things before researching anything:

  1. Mode — spike, competitive, or feasibility.
  2. Depth — quick (high-level overview), standard (actionable depth), or deep dive (comprehensive, production-ready guidance).
  3. Scope — technologies to include or exclude, constraints (budget, team expertise, existing stack), and the decision factors that define success.

Method

  1. Scope — confirm the question and its boundaries, the key terms, and the known constraints.
  2. Plan — choose sources (web, documentation, the codebase), split into sub-questions, and prioritize by the user's decision factors.
  3. Gather — search and read; explore the codebase where relevant. Record every source as you go, not afterwards.
  4. Synthesize — organize findings by theme, identify patterns and trade-offs, derive recommendations from the evidence, and name the gaps.
  5. Write — produce the report, then check it against the quality gates.

Anti-Hallucination

  • State only what a source explicitly confirms.
  • Hedge inferences: "suggests", "likely", "based on X, we can infer".
  • Keep opinion visibly distinct from fact.
  • Label anything you cannot verify as "unverified" or "needs confirmation".
  • When comparing options, include only documented features.

Output

Write to research/[topic-slug]/spike-report.md, progressively as you work rather than in one pass at the end. Read references/report-template.md for the section template and the quality gates to verify before finishing. Close by telling the user where the file is and what it concluded.