Use research-plan

Turn a vague research question into a research plan

Turn a vague research question into a research plan — the decision the research serves, the precise question and sub-questions, what finding would change the decision, a method per sub-question (desk research, interviews, data pull, experiment), source types with inclusion and exclusion criteria, ready-to-run search strings, a stopping rule for when you have enough, and the deliverable. Starts by asking what decision the research is for.

Reach for it when the user says "I need to research X", "help me scope this research", "how should I investigate…", "what should I look into before deciding…", or wants a research or discovery plan.

Install it

npx skilldrop-cli install research-plan                 # Claude Code, your user folder
npx skilldrop-cli install research-plan --project       # Claude Code, this repo
npx skilldrop-cli install research-plan --ide cursor    # or kiro, codex, antigravity, copilot

It is part of the Research pack: --pack research installs it with its neighbours.

Ask for it

Say it the way you would to a colleague. Requests like these route to it:

• "I need to research whether we should move to usage-based pricing before the board meeting. Help me scope it."
• "How should I investigate why enterprise customers take so long to onboard? Give me a research plan."
• "Plan the desk research for a literature review on hybrid work, with search strings and inclusion criteria"
• "My research on this keeps growing. Help me define the sub-questions and when to stop."

Requests like these belong to a different skill, so it shouldn't answer them:

• "Here are five reports I've collected; synthesise them with citations"
• "Write the interview questions for the sponsor and the ops lead before we build the feature"
• "Do a SWOT on our position against Contoso"

If another skill answers instead, ask for this one by name: "use research-plan".

Check what you get

A good result:

• The plan names the decision, who makes it, and the date. Every sub-question traces back to it.
• The question is precise: population, intervention or topic, comparison, timeframe.
• Each sub-question has a "would change the decision" finding, written before research starts, with a threshold where one makes sense.
• Each sub-question has a method, a scope, an owner and a time, and the method is the cheapest one that can answer it.
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria are explicit for desk research: dates, geography, population, source type.
• Search strings are ready to paste, with synonyms and where to run them.
• There is a stopping rule with both a sufficiency test and a budget cap.
• Nothing in the plan states findings. It doesn't present a guess at the answer as known.

See a worked example

• four day week plan

Use something else when

• The sources are already collected and need summarising — source-synthesis
• Ranking rival explanations for something that already happened — hypothesis-comparison
• Writing the interview scripts for stakeholders — requirements-interview
• A strategy framework such as SWOT or Five Forces on a market — strategy-analysis
• Turning a messy thread into a brief for another skill — brief-intake

Where a loop runs it

• Stage plan of the research loop

Next

• SKILL.md, the instructions the agent reads
• Its page on the site
• Related: brief-intake, hypothesis-comparison, requirements-interview, source-synthesis, strategy-analysis

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