Step 1 Identify Query Type

---
name: search-strategy-step-1-identify-query-type
description: 'Sub-skill of search-strategy: Step 1: Identify Query Type (+2).'
version: 1.0.0
category: business
type: reference
scripts_exempt: true
---

# Step 1: Identify Query Type (+2)

## Step 1: Identify Query Type


Classify the user's question to determine search strategy:

| Query Type | Example | Strategy |
|-----------|---------|----------|
| **Decision** | "What did we decide about X?" | Prioritize conversations (~~chat, email), look for conclusion signals |
| **Status** | "What's the status of Project Y?" | Prioritize recent activity, task trackers, status updates |
| **Document** | "Where's the spec for Z?" | Prioritize Drive, wiki, shared docs |
| **Person** | "Who's working on X?" | Search task assignments, message authors, doc collaborators |
| **Factual** | "What's our policy on X?" | Prioritize wiki, official docs, then confirmatory conversations |
| **Temporal** | "When did X happen?" | Search with broad date range, look for timestamps |
| **Exploratory** | "What do we know about X?" | Broad search across all sources, synthesize |


## Step 2: Extract Search Components


From the query, extract:

- **Keywords**: Core terms that must appear in results
- **Entities**: People, projects, teams, tools (use memory system if available)
- **Intent signals**: Decision words, status words, temporal markers
- **Constraints**: Time ranges, source hints, author filters
- **Negations**: Things to exclude


## Step 3: Generate Sub-Queries Per Source


For each available source, create one or more targeted queries:

**Prefer semantic search** for:
- Conceptual questions ("What do we think about...")
- Questions where exact keywords are unknown
- Exploratory queries

**Prefer keyword search** for:
- Known terms, project names, acronyms
- Exact phrases the user quoted
- Filter-heavy queries (from:, in:, after:)

**Generate multiple query variants** when the topic might be referred to differently:
```
User: "Kubernetes setup"
Queries: "Kubernetes", "k8s", "cluster", "container orchestration"
```