Individual skill

research-lookup

Answers a focused factual or technical question from current sources with links, a definition, a number, a method's origin, a library's behavior, what a specific paper found, using literature, research_search, webfetch and the scholarly APIs, and knowing when the question is really a literature review. Use for quick grounded lookups during research or writing. Not for surveying a topic (use literature-review) or for verifying a manuscript's citations (use citations).

backend/cli/skills/core/research-lookup/SKILL.md

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Repository last updated: Nov 6, 2026
License: Apache-2.0

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SKILL.mdcore · 4,087 bytes
SKILL.mdcore · 4,087 bytes
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# Research lookup

A lookup answers one question with the source that answers it. The failure modes are
answering from memory with a confident tone, and turning a two-minute question into a
survey. Both are avoided by deciding what would settle the question before searching.

## Rules

1. **Decide the settling evidence first.** A definition needs the defining source; a
   number needs the table it came from; "does library X do Y" needs the documentation or
   the code; "what did paper P find" needs paper P.
2. **Search where the answer lives.** Scholarly claims: `literature search` (OpenAlex and
   arXiv together), then `literature read` with the DOI or arXiv id and a `query` for the
   passage; PubMed, Crossref and the exact API requests are in