deep-research-team

# Deep Research Team (Lead Orchestrator)

Conduct thorough, iterative research by coordinating a persistent team of researcher agents across
multiple rounds. This architecture enables mid-investigation steering, targeted follow-up based on
emerging findings, and cross-agent verification.

## Architecture Overview

```
Round 1: Investigation      Round 2: Follow-up          Synthesis

┌──────────┐                  ┌──────────┐                  ┌────────┐
│Researcher│  sends findings  │Researcher│  sends findings  │        │
│    A     ├─────────┬───────>│    A     ├─────────┬───────>│        │
└──────────┘         │        └──────────┘         │        │        │
                     │                             │        │        │
                     v          dispatches         v        │        │
┌──────────┐    ┌────────┐    ┌──────────┐    ┌────────┐    │  Lead  │
│Researcher├───>│  Lead  │───>│Researcher├───>│  Lead  │───>│  synth │
│    B     │    │triages │    │    B     │    │triages │    │  esizes│
└──────────┘    └────────┘    └──────────┘    └────────┘    │        │
                     ^                             ^        │        │
┌──────────┐         │        ┌──────────┐         │        │        │
│Researcher├─────────┴───────>│Researcher├─────────┴───────>│        │
│    C     │  sends findings  │    C     │  sends findings  │        │
└──────────┘                  └──────────┘                  └────────┘
```

**Key principles:**

1. **No peer-to-peer researcher communication.** All coordination goes through the lead. This
   preserves the independence that accounts for 87% of multi-agent gains (Choi et al.) and avoids
   sycophancy failures (Wynn et al.). Researchers never see each other's findings.

2. **Multi-round iteration.** The lead triages Round 1 findings and creates targeted Round 2 tasks
   for gaps, conflicts, and promising leads.

3. **Cross-agent verification (Comprehensive scope).** The lead asks Researcher A to verify
   Researcher B's high-impact single-source claim. The verifier only sees the claim and its
   source, not the original researcher's full analysis.

4. **Dynamic task evolution.** The shared task list starts with pre-planned angles but grows
   organically as follow-up tasks emerge from findings. The lead dispatches follow-up tasks
   directly to specific researchers via SendMessage.

## When to Use

**Use this skill for:**

- Complex questions that benefit from multiple research angles
- Topics where initial findings will reveal what to investigate next
- Research requiring cross-verification of contested claims
- Any question needing synthesis across 5+ sources

**Do NOT use for:**

- Simple factual lookups (use regular web search)
- Questions answerable with 1-2 searches
- Debugging or code questions

## Effort Calibration

| Scope             | Researchers | Rounds | Verification | Model  |
| ----------------- | ----------- | ------ | ------------ | ------ |
| **Focused**       | 2           | 1-2    | None         | sonnet |
| **Broad**         | 3           | 2-3    | None         | sonnet |
| **Comprehensive** | 4           | 3-4    | Cross-agent  | opus   |

Round counts are heuristics, not targets. Stop early when you hit citation convergence --
additional rounds that don't surface new substantive findings waste tokens and context. A
Broad run that converges in 2 rounds is a success, not a shortcut. After each round's triage,
ask: "Would another round change the report's conclusions?" If not, proceed to synthesis.

Default scope is determined by question type (see `references/question-types.md`).
Present the recommended scope to the user and allow override.

**Model selection:**

- **Lead**: inherits user's session model (no override)
- **Researchers**: `sonnet` for Focused/Broad, `opus` for Comprehensive

(Sonnet validated as viable override for Comprehensive when cost matters)

## Output Directory

Research artifacts persist to disk for resumability and backup.

**Directory resolution** -- run this command FIRST, before creating anything. The output is
your `{output_dir}`. Only the fallback branch creates a directory; the others reuse what exists.

```bash
if [ -d "$(pwd)/deep-research" ]; then
  echo "$(pwd)/deep-research"
elif [ -n "$CLAUDE_DEEP_RESEARCH_DIR" ]; then
  eval echo "$CLAUDE_DEEP_RESEARCH_DIR"
else
  mkdir -p "$(pwd)/deep-research"
  echo "$(pwd)/deep-research"
fi
```

After resolving `{output_dir}`, create only the topic subdirectory in Phase 3.

Each session creates a subdirectory: `{output_dir}/{topic-slug}/`

**Contents:**

- `state.md` -- triage checkpoint, cross-references, follow-up plan (written in Phase 4)
- `researcher-{letter}-findings.md` -- backup of each researcher's findings
- `report.md` -- final synthesized report (written in Phase 6)

## Calibrated Confidence Language

Use Kent-style verbal probability expressions in all confidence assessments:

| Term           | Range  | Use When                                  |
| -------------- | ------ | ----------------------------------------- |
| Almost certain | 93-99% | Multiple high-quality sources, no dissent |
| Highly likely  | 80-92% | Strong evidence, minor caveats            |
| Likely         | 63-79% | Good evidence, some gaps                  |
| Roughly even   | 40-62% | Conflicting evidence, genuinely uncertain |
| Unlikely       | 20-39% | Limited or weak evidence                  |

Always pair the verbal term with the probability range in the final report.

## Process

### Phase 0: Classify Question Type

Silently classify the user's question before any interaction.

1. Read `references/question-types.md` for the full taxonomy.
2. Assign a primary type: Factual, Scientific/Health, Consumer, Technical, Opinion/Sentiment,
   Contested, or Emerging/Frontier.
3. For compound questions, decompose into sub-questions and classify each.
4. Note the default scope from the type-to-scope mapping.

**Resume check:** Before starting, list the su