research[A]-exploration

user_requirements.md priority: All user constraints recorded in docs/user_requirements.md (direction preferences, implementation requirements, document format, etc.) take precedence over any default instruction in this skill. Always read that file before generating any output to ensure compliance with confirmed user constraints.

Phase A: Direction Exploration

Starting from a vague research interest, converge through multi-turn interaction to a well-grounded research direction and a clear set of research questions (RQs). Produces docs/idea_report.md Part 1, then moves to Phase B.

Workflow Overview & Outputs

ResearchPilot-Skills splits a complete academic research project into seven independent stage skills. The current skill is one link in that chain.

Seven-Stage Chain

Project Directory Structure

docs/
  idea_report.md        # Research report in three parts:
                        #   Part 1: Motivation, RQs, Key Works  (Phase A)
                        #   Part 2: Introduction, Related Works, Method  (Phase B)
                        #   Part 3: Datasets, Experiment Design, Resource Estimate  (Phase C)
  implementation.md     # Coding guide: file- and function-level implementation plan  (Phase D)
  dev_log.md            # Dev log: progress, decisions, "How to Run" section  (Phase E)
  user_requirements.md  # User constraints: collected and maintained by Claude
  papers/               # Downloaded paper PDFs or abstract TXTs
  manuscripts/          # Paper drafts, each revision archived separately
                        #   (e.g. v1.0-initial-draft.md, v1.1-revision.md)

code/
  src/                  # Core model and training code
  scripts/              # Run scripts (train.sh, evaluate.sh, ablation.sh)
  configs/              # Hyperparameter config files
  baselines/            # Baseline model implementations
  notebooks/            # Visualization notebooks; paper figure/table generation
  data/                 # Datasets (gitignored)
  results/              # Experiment results (gitignored)
  logs/                 # Training logs (gitignored)
  README.md             # Environment setup and run commands
  requirements.txt      # Dependencies (library names only, no torch family)

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Commands

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Trigger Logic

/research[A]-exploration download-paper → execute standalone download, skip flow

/research[A]-exploration (no content) → refuse and reply:
  "Please provide a research description, e.g.:
   /research[A]-exploration I want to improve battery SOH prediction —
   existing Transformer methods don't exploit local temporal features"

Otherwise → enter direction exploration flow

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Phase A Flow Overview

A-1 Parse input, collect requirements (write to user_requirements.md)
A-2 Initial literature search (≥15 papers, ≥2 per gap, up to 3 rounds)
A-3 Show download list to user for confirmation
A-4 Execute downloads, report results
A-4.5 Ask whether user wants detailed per-paper introductions
A-5 Anchor problem domain, confirm research direction step by step
A-6 Refine and confirm RQs one by one (primary RQ + secondary RQs)
A-7 Compile idea_report.md Part 1

Full step-by-step instructions: references/phase-A.md.

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Confirmation Card

Every output in this phase begins with a confirmed-content card (when content exists):

━━━━━━━━━━ Confirmed Content ━━━━━━━━━━
Research direction: {confirmed direction}
Primary RQ: {confirmed primary RQ}
Secondary RQs: {confirmed secondary RQs}
Direction constraints: {user constraints}
RQ constraints: {user constraints}
Reference papers: {user-specified papers}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Only output confirmed, non-empty fields. Omit empty or unconfirmed fields entirely.

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Paper Download

Full download logic (arXiv → OpenReview → abstract TXT fallback) is in references/phase-A.md, Paper Download section.

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Non-Negotiable Constraints

1. Do not advance to Phase B without explicit user confirmation.
2. Never fabricate citations. All references must be verified via web_search; unverifiable entries get [to verify].
3. Never hide uncertainty. Low-confidence content gets ⚠️ [low confidence: reason].
4. After download-paper, always output the full file path.
5. user_requirements.md is maintained by Claude through conversation only.
6. Rules in references/template-flexibility.md take precedence over any specific template instruction.
7. Before every idea generation or adjustment, read existing literature extensively (see references/phase-A.md, Literature Reading Principle).

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On Phase Completion

After Part 1 is compiled and confirmed:

Phase A complete. idea_report.md Part 1 has been generated.

→ Use `/research[B]-idea` to enter the Idea Deepening phase.

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Reference Files

• Detailed flow: references/phase-A.md
• Document format specs: references/document-formats.md
• idea_report.md blank template: references/idea_report-template.md
• Template flexibility rules: references/template-flexibility.md
• User requirements collection: references/user-requirements-template.md