# `techne:research-grounded`

Flag decisions (technology choices, data release and privacy, study design, access-rule readings, public-claim wording) that lack a `# research(YYYY-MM):` provenance comment, then web-search to ground them before they harden into code.

Part of [techne](<https://ajbarea.github.io/techne/plugins/techne/index.md>): `/plugin install techne@techne`, then `/techne:setup`.

## When to use

- Before a plan's decisions turn into commits or a release: "are these choices grounded in current best practice or the governing source, or in training-cutoff recall?"
- After drafting IMPL.md / ROADMAP.md or research-log entries that pick a tool, pattern, protocol, data-release form, exclusion rule, licence reading or public claim.
- When a decision is stated as fact ("X supports Y") that was never verified against the target's current docs, the class of miss that becomes revertable work.
- Auditing `planning/` design notes, research logs and ADRs for un-cited choices.

## Usage

Invoke by name in Claude Code:

```text
/techne:research-grounded
```

Scope is `IMPL.md` + `ROADMAP.md` in the current repo, plus every file, directory or glob in the `decision_docs:` key of the `## research_grounded` block of `.claude/skill-context.md` (research logs, registered decisions, ADRs, specs). Long append-only logs are audited by recent entries only. Narrow or redirect by naming a file or directory:

```text
/techne:research-grounded planning/
```

The skill greps for decision language only as a candidate seed, then reads around each hit to keep the genuine choices among alternatives: technology, pattern, architecture, data release, study design, access-rule readings and claim wording. Descriptive prose ("reads X instead of Y") and hypotheticals ("what if we used…") are filtered out. For each committed decision lacking an adjacent `research(YYYY-MM):` tag or an in-record citation, it reports a `decision → gap → action` entry and, on confirmation, web-searches current best practice and adds the provenance tag, or `no source found` when the search finds none. It never invents a citation.

## See also

- [`techne:docsync`](<https://ajbarea.github.io/techne/skills/docsync/index.md>): verifies documentation claims against the code; this skill is the sibling that verifies design *decisions* against *evidence*.
- [`techne:deslop`](<https://ajbarea.github.io/techne/skills/deslop/index.md>): tightens AI-slop prose, a different kind of doc-quality pass.

## Full instructions

[`SKILL.md` on GitHub](<https://github.com/ajbarea/techne/blob/main/plugins/techne/skills/research-grounded/SKILL.md>) holds the full instructions Claude follows for this skill.