Research

Confirm external behavior against current source, not recall. The enemy is the version-specific detail recalled with confidence, wrong in a way that compiles and fails at runtime. The overcorrection is researching a call the repository already makes in deployed code: for what that code does today, working code outranks a fresh fetch.

When to use

• Code decision depends on how a pinned external version behaves, and a wrong answer would still compile or type-check.
• Not for a question the repository's own code answers, a version-only bump, or a concept with no version dependency.

The loop

1. Find the installed version in lockfile or manifest first; question is how this pinned version behaves, not how the library works.
2. Fetch that version's first-party docs, changelog or migration guide, never a blog post; no exact match → highest documented version not newer than the install, else lowest newer one; state both versions.
3. Fetch only the section that answers the question, quote at most ten lines; a page read once is re-read every later turn.
4. Cite every claim that shaped a decision with its URL; uncited claim = recollection, flagged as one.
5. State what could not be confirmed, never fill the gap: "could not confirm X; proceeding on Y" is a valid outcome.

Where this runs

• Dispatch the exo:fetch-docs agent with the question alone: library, pinned version and what to confirm, or the document paths.
• The agent holds budget, stop rule and report shape; dispatch repeats none. exo:locate-code owns the repository.
• No separate context → read here, one page at a time.
• Hand back confirmed facts, citations and the unconfirmed remainder, never pages.

Output

Findings stay in the message; turn ends under the closing rule in route-skills: confirmed answer first, citations next, then what stayed unconfirmed. Write docs/research/<library>.md only when the user asks for a file, or a named later executor needs the findings and they rest on two or more first-party sources.

Judgment

• What deployed code does today → repository's working code outranks fetched docs. Code written or upgraded now → pinned or target version's docs outrank a pattern the source marks deprecated or unsafe; unrelated code is not modernized.
• Research pass ends the turn only when the question is standalone with no code to follow; the turn ends on the findings, per Output. Pass unblocks a spec, build or find-cause step in progress → hand findings back, step continues.
• After a compaction notice → restate facts from the delegated report or research file, or repeat the delegated read; recollection is not research.