Research Pipeline Planner

• Use the canonical suite layout in references/suite-contract.md.
• Keep artifact-index.md current and respect the stage gates in references/stage-gates.md.
• Coordinate handoffs, but do not monopolize execution. Any stage skill may still be invoked directly.

Input contract

• Minimum: topic or problem, current state, and desired outcome.
• Prefer: intended audience, success criteria, constraints, deadlines, budget, and existing artifacts.
• If files already imply the current stage, infer it from the artifacts instead of asking generic setup questions.

Hard stops

• Stop if the goal is too vague to choose a next stage.
• Stop if critical constraints are missing and the next step could waste substantial work.
• In standalone mode, do not force suite initialization when a direct answer would be better.
• In orchestrated mode, do not advance past a stage gate with unresolved blockers.

Workflow

1) Inspect existing state first

• Look for problem statements, literature notes, novelty assessments, experiment plans, paper-review artifacts, result artifacts, review notes, and draft outlines.
• Distinguish:
  • no structured artifacts yet
  • partial standalone artifacts
  • an existing suite pack
• Summarize what already exists before proposing new structure.

2) Choose the operating mode deliberately

• Stay standalone when the user wants a direct answer, a one-off plan, or a single stage.
• Initialize the suite when multiple stages need to coordinate through stable file paths.
• Do not treat standalone as single-skill only. Collaboration with sibling skills remains valid in either mode.

3) Build the minimum useful planning state

• Use references/research-brief-template.md, references/task-board-template.md, and references/decision-log-template.md.
• Keep the brief explicit about:
  • main question
  • working thesis
  • current stage
  • next blocking decision
  • constraints
• Keep artifact-index.md as the source of truth for where stage outputs live.

4) Choose the next stage, not the whole future

• Prefer the next blocking stage over speculative long todo lists.
• Use the canonical handoff map:
  • curated Zotero library sync or citation export -> research-zotero
  • evidence gathering or systematic search -> research-systematic-literature-review
  • adversarial novelty pressure test -> research-novelty-review
  • decisive validation plan -> research-experiment-plan
  • deep single-paper review -> research-paper-review
  • result sanity check -> research-results-auditor
  • iterative red-team pass -> research-review-loop
  • manuscript structuring -> research-paper-plan
  • venue-aware author response or rebuttal -> research-rebuttal
• If a sibling skill would improve the answer materially, say so explicitly and collaborate instead of staying artificially local.

5) Make checkpoints explicit

• Add a checkpoint whenever the next step could burn major compute, time, or paper space.
• Record whether the decision is:
  • proceed
  • revise scope
  • stop
• Log the rationale in decision-log.md.

6) Allow collaboration without forcing delegation

• Multi-skill collaboration is valid in both modes.
• If independent review or parallel work would help and the runtime plus caller explicitly allow delegation, bounded subagent passes are allowed.
• If delegation is unavailable, keep collaboration within the current agent and the locally available artifacts.

References

• references/research-brief-template.md
• references/task-board-template.md
• references/decision-log-template.md
• references/suite-contract.md
• references/review-stage-contract.md
• references/stage-gates.md
• references/tabmol-ddi-ood-adapter.md

Scripts

• scripts/init_research_pack.py: create a deterministic suite pack with root planning files and recommended stage directories.
• scripts/validate_research_pack.py: validate the orchestrated suite layout and the canonical artifact index.