Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.
Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.
Are you the author of Research With Primary Sources?
Add the live security badge to your README. It updates with every re-scan.
[](https://www.skillsdirectory.com/skills/everywan-dev-research-with-primary-sources)
---
name: research-with-primary-sources
description: Investigate a question against high-trust primary sources and capture the findings as a Markdown file in the repo. Use when the user wants a topic researched, docs or API facts gathered, or reading legwork delegated to a background agent.
---
Spin up a **background agent** to do the research-with-primary-sources, so you keep working while it reads.
Its job:
1. Investigate the question against **primary sources** (official docs, source code, specs, first-party APIs), not a secondary write-up of them. Follow every claim back to the source that owns it.
2. Write the findings to a single Markdown file, citing each claim's source.
3. Save it where the repo already keeps such notes; match the existing convention, and if there is none, put it somewhere sensible and say where.
---
*Adapted from [`mattpocock/skills`](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills), MIT licence, Copyright (c) 2026 Matt Pocock. Renamed and cross-linked for this collection; the method is his. Full licence text in [`LICENSES/mattpocock-skills-MIT.txt`](../../LICENSES/mattpocock-skills-MIT.txt).*
