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storm-research

Research
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Run STORM phase 1 — multi-perspective research. This skill should be used when the user asks to "research a topic for an article", "find sources on X from multiple perspectives", "do storm research on X", or invokes /storm:research. Discovers personas, runs simulated Q&A per persona in parallel, and produces an information table + deduplicated sources.

QUICK START

How to use this skill

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  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy the prompt below and paste it into your agent.
  3. Review the proposed files and risks before you approve installation.
Prompt to paste
I want to install this Agent Skill for this project in Codex.

Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/FradSer/dotclaude/blob/HEAD/storm/skills/research/SKILL.md

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First, summarize what it does, its dependencies, license status if identifiable, and any risks. Show the exact files you propose to add under .agents/skills/storm-research/. Do not write files or run scripts until I approve.

After I approve, install the complete skill folder, including required referenced files, into that project location. Verify it is discoverable, then tell me its actual invocation name and how to use it. Do not claim it is installed until you have verified it.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use. Codex skill guide

/storm:research

Phase 1 of the STORM pipeline. Discovers research personas, runs a simulated multi-turn conversation per persona (each grounded in retrieval), and produces the information table that downstream phases consume.

CRITICAL: Load Engine First

Load storm-engine via the Skill tool. Its "Persona Discovery", "Simulated Conversation", "Retrieval", and "Citation Hygiene" sections govern this phase.

Completion Contract

This phase is complete iff research/sources.json exists and has ≥1 entry. If --force is not set and the artifact exists, skip and exit early.

Procedure

  1. Resolve output dir (see engine). Ensure research/ subdir exists.
  2. Persona discovery — search the web for the topic + 2-3 related concepts; fetch reference pages and extract their section headings. Use those real structures to propose --max-perspective personas (default 3), each with a distinct question category, plus one "Basic fact writer". Write research/personas.json.
  3. Retrieval probe — via ToolSearch, look for exa-mcp-server search tools (code-search, research-paper-search, company-search, personal-site-search, financial-report-search, x-search). Record which are available in run-config.json as retriever. If none and not --docs, fall back to WebSearch/WebFetch.
  4. Parallel simulated conversations — launch one storm-researcher subagent per persona in a single message (parallel). Each subagent:
    • Receives: topic, persona definition, retrieval instructions, max_turns.
    • Runs the WikiWriter↔TopicExpert dialogue: writer asks a question, expert does question_to_query, retrieves, answers with source attribution.
    • Ends when writer says "Thank you so much for your help!" or max_turns reached.
    • Returns: a JSON array of {question, queries, snippets, answer, cited_sources}.
    • Launch all persona subagents in a single message (parallel) — do not serialize.
  5. Merge — collect all conversation records into research/conversations.jsonl (one JSON object per line). Deduplicate cited sources by URL into research/sources.json, assigning sequential ids. Strip any inline [n] from snippets before storing (citation hygiene).
  6. Verify — assert sources.json has ≥1 entry and every persona produced ≥1 turn. If a persona produced nothing, note it but do not fail the whole phase.
  7. Update run-config.json: phases.research = "completed", retriever, source count.

Concurrency Note

If the user reports rate-limit errors during this phase, reduce concurrency by running personas in smaller batches (e.g. 2 at a time) rather than lowering max_turns — mirroring upstream's max_thread_num guidance.

Output

Report: number of personas, total conversation turns, number of deduplicated sources, and the path to research/sources.json.