Best use case
research-workflow is best used when you need a repeatable AI agent workflow instead of a one-off prompt.
It is a strong fit for teams already working in Codex.
Execute multi-stage research workflows
Teams using research-workflow should expect a more consistent output, faster repeated execution, less prompt rewriting.
When to use this skill
- You want a reusable workflow that can be run more than once with consistent structure.
When not to use this skill
- You only need a quick one-off answer and do not need a reusable workflow.
- You cannot install or maintain the underlying files, dependencies, or repository context.
Installation
Claude Code / Cursor / Codex
Manual Installation
- Download SKILL.md from GitHub
- Place it in
.claude/skills/research-workflow/SKILL.mdinside your project - Restart your AI agent — it will auto-discover the skill
How research-workflow Compares
| Feature / Agent | research-workflow | Standard Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Platform Support | Codex | Limited / Varies |
| Context Awareness | High | Baseline |
| Installation Complexity | Unknown | N/A |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does this skill do?
Execute multi-stage research workflows
Which AI agents support this skill?
This skill is designed for Codex.
Where can I find the source code?
You can find the source code on GitHub using the link provided at the top of the page.
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SKILL.md Source
# Research Workflow Command
Execute complete multi-stage research workflows from discovery through archival.
## Instructions
When invoked, orchestrate multi-agent research workflows:
1. **Load Workflow Definition**
- Identify workflow by name or load custom workflow YAML
- Parse stages, agents, dependencies
- Validate workflow structure
2. **Execute Stages Sequentially**
- Each stage invokes specific agents
- Pass outputs from one stage to next
- Handle stage failures and retries
- Track progress and status
3. **Monitor Execution**
- Display progress indicators
- Log all agent invocations
- Capture intermediate outputs
- Track resource usage (tokens, time)
4. **Handle Gates**
- Pause for human approval at designated gates
- Present artifacts for review
- Collect feedback and decisions
- Resume or abort based on input
5. **Generate Report**
- Summarize workflow execution
- Report outcomes for each stage
- Calculate quality metrics
- Archive workflow state
## Built-in Workflows
| Workflow | Stages | Description |
|----------|--------|-------------|
| `discovery-to-corpus` | 5 | Full pipeline from search to documented findings |
| `paper-acquisition` | 3 | Download, extract metadata, create finding document |
| `quality-assessment` | 4 | GRADE assessment with citation validation |
| `corpus-maintenance` | 6 | Periodic corpus health checks and updates |
| `synthesis-report` | 4 | Generate synthesis report from topic cluster |
| `citation-audit` | 3 | Validate all citations across corpus |
## Arguments
- `[workflow-name]` - Workflow to execute (required)
- `--input [yaml-file]` - Input parameters for workflow
- `--stage [n]` - Start from specific stage (default: 1)
- `--pause-at [stage]` - Pause after specific stage
- `--interactive` - Prompt for confirmation at each stage
- `--dry-run` - Preview workflow without execution
- `--resume [workflow-id]` - Resume previously interrupted workflow
## Workflow Definitions
### discovery-to-corpus
Complete pipeline from literature search to documented findings:
**Stages:**
1. **Discovery** (agent: discovery-agent)
- Search academic databases for query
- Rank and filter results
- Present top candidates
2. **Acquisition** (agent: acquisition-agent)
- Download selected papers
- Extract metadata
- Generate frontmatter
- Create finding documents
3. **Documentation** (agent: documentation-agent)
- Parse PDFs
- Extract key findings
- Assess AIWG relevance
- Generate literature notes
4. **Quality Assessment** (agent: quality-agent)
- Apply GRADE framework
- Calculate quality level
- Generate assessment reports
- Update frontmatter
5. **Archival** (agent: archival-agent)
- Create BagIt packages
- Update fixity manifest
- Register in archival index
**Human Gates:**
- After Discovery: Select papers to acquire
- After Quality Assessment: Approve quality levels
### paper-acquisition
Streamlined acquisition workflow:
**Stages:**
1. **Download** (agent: acquisition-agent)
- Fetch PDF from source
- Verify file integrity
2. **Metadata Extraction** (agent: acquisition-agent)
- Parse PDF metadata
- Enrich via CrossRef/Semantic Scholar
- Assign REF-XXX identifier
3. **Document Creation** (agent: documentation-agent)
- Generate finding document from template
- Populate frontmatter
- Add placeholder sections
### quality-assessment
Comprehensive quality assessment workflow:
**Stages:**
1. **GRADE Assessment** (agent: quality-agent)
- Determine baseline quality
- Apply downgrade/upgrade factors
- Calculate final GRADE level
2. **Hedging Analysis** (agent: quality-agent)
- Generate appropriate hedging language
- Document forbidden phrases
- Create citation templates
3. **Citation Validation** (agent: citation-agent)
- Scan corpus for citations of this source
- Check hedging compliance
- Generate remediation suggestions
4. **Report Generation** (agent: quality-agent)
- Create assessment report
- Update frontmatter
- Save assessment YAML
## Examples
```bash
# Execute full discovery-to-corpus workflow
/research-workflow discovery-to-corpus --input discovery-params.yaml
# Acquire specific paper
/research-workflow paper-acquisition --input '{"doi": "10.48550/arXiv.2308.08155"}'
# Run quality assessment
/research-workflow quality-assessment --input '{"ref_id": "REF-022"}'
# Interactive mode with pauses
/research-workflow discovery-to-corpus --interactive
# Dry run to preview
/research-workflow corpus-maintenance --dry-run
# Resume interrupted workflow
/research-workflow resume wf-20260203-123456
```
## Expected Output
```
Executing Workflow: discovery-to-corpus
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Input Parameters:
Query: "agentic workflows for software development"
Max results: 10
Year from: 2020
Workflow Progress: [████░░░░░░] Stage 1/5
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Stage 1: Discovery (agent: discovery-agent)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Status: Running...
✓ Queried arXiv (42 results)
✓ Queried ACM DL (18 results)
✓ Queried IEEE Xplore (25 results)
✓ Queried Semantic Scholar (67 results)
✓ Deduplicated and ranked
✓ Top 10 results selected
Duration: 15s
Status: COMPLETE
Output:
10 papers identified
Saved to: .aiwg/research/search-cache/results-20260203-143000.yaml
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HUMAN GATE: Paper Selection
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Top 10 Results:
1. [✓] AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications (Wu et al., 2023)
Relevance: 0.95, Citations: 234, DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2308.08155
2. [✓] The Landscape of Emerging AI Agent Architectures (Wang et al., 2024)
Relevance: 0.89, Citations: 89, DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2404.11584
3. [ ] MetaGPT: Meta Programming for Multi-Agent Systems (Hong et al., 2023)
Relevance: 0.87, Citations: 156, DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2308.00352
Note: Already in corpus as REF-013
4. [✓] Agent Laboratory: Using LLM Agents as Research Assistants (Schmidgall et al., 2024)
Relevance: 0.85, Citations: 45, arXiv:2404.11587
... (6 more)
Select papers to acquire [1,2,4 or 'all']: 1,2,4
Selected: 3 papers
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Workflow Progress: [████████░░] Stage 2/5
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Stage 2: Acquisition (agent: acquisition-agent)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Status: Running...
Paper 1/3: AutoGen (10.48550/arXiv.2308.08155)
✓ Downloaded PDF (2.4 MB)
✓ Metadata extracted
✓ Assigned REF-022
✓ Finding document created
Paper 2/3: Emerging AI Agent Architectures (10.48550/arXiv.2404.11584)
✓ Downloaded PDF (3.1 MB)
✓ Metadata extracted
✓ Assigned REF-075
✓ Finding document created
Paper 3/3: Agent Laboratory (arXiv:2404.11587)
✓ Downloaded PDF (1.8 MB)
✓ Metadata extracted
✓ Assigned REF-076
✓ Finding document created
Duration: 42s
Status: COMPLETE
Output:
3 papers acquired
REF-022, REF-075, REF-076
Total size: 7.3 MB
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Workflow Progress: [████████████░░] Stage 3/5
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Stage 3: Documentation (agent: documentation-agent)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Status: Running...
REF-022: AutoGen
✓ PDF parsed (27 pages)
✓ 4 key findings extracted
✓ AIWG relevance assessed (HIGH)
✓ Literature notes created
✓ Finding document populated (1,847 words)
REF-075: Emerging AI Agent Architectures
✓ PDF parsed (18 pages)
✓ 5 key findings extracted
✓ AIWG relevance assessed (HIGH)
✓ Literature notes created
✓ Finding document populated (2,103 words)
REF-076: Agent Laboratory
✓ PDF parsed (12 pages)
✓ 3 key findings extracted
✓ AIWG relevance assessed (MEDIUM)
✓ Literature notes created
✓ Finding document populated (1,524 words)
Duration: 3m 15s
Status: COMPLETE
Output:
3 finding documents completed
3 literature notes created
Total: 5,474 words of documentation
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Workflow Progress: [█████████████░] Stage 4/5
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Stage 4: Quality Assessment (agent: quality-agent)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Status: Running...
REF-022: AutoGen
✓ Baseline: MODERATE (conference paper)
✓ Downgrade: -1 (imprecision)
✓ Final GRADE: LOW
✓ Assessment saved
REF-075: Emerging AI Agent Architectures
✓ Baseline: VERY LOW (preprint, not peer-reviewed)
✓ No upgrades/downgrades
✓ Final GRADE: VERY LOW
✓ Assessment saved
REF-076: Agent Laboratory
✓ Baseline: MODERATE (preprint, high-quality)
✓ Upgrade: +1 (large effect)
✓ Final GRADE: MODERATE
✓ Assessment saved
Duration: 45s
Status: COMPLETE
Output:
3 quality assessments completed
GRADE levels: LOW, VERY LOW, MODERATE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HUMAN GATE: Quality Approval
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Quality assessments complete. Review GRADE levels:
REF-022: LOW (conference paper with limited evaluation)
REF-075: VERY LOW (preprint, not peer-reviewed)
REF-076: MODERATE (high-quality preprint with strong findings)
Approve quality levels? [Y/n]: Y
Approved. Proceeding to archival.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Workflow Progress: [██████████████] Stage 5/5
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Stage 5: Archival (agent: archival-agent)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Status: Running...
REF-022: AutoGen
✓ BagIt package created (2.5 MB)
✓ Checksums verified
✓ Registered in archival index
REF-075: Emerging AI Agent Architectures
✓ BagIt package created (3.2 MB)
✓ Checksums verified
✓ Registered in archival index
REF-076: Agent Laboratory
✓ BagIt package created (1.9 MB)
✓ Checksums verified
✓ Registered in archival index
Duration: 28s
Status: COMPLETE
Output:
3 archival packages created
Total archived size: 7.6 MB
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Workflow Complete!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Summary:
Workflow: discovery-to-corpus
Duration: 5m 25s
Papers processed: 3
Success rate: 100%
Artifacts Created:
- 3 PDFs (.aiwg/research/sources/)
- 3 finding documents (.aiwg/research/findings/)
- 3 literature notes (.aiwg/research/literature-notes/)
- 3 quality assessments (.aiwg/research/quality-assessments/)
- 3 archival packages (.aiwg/research/archives/)
Resource Usage:
Tokens consumed: 45,230
API calls: 27
Storage used: 7.6 MB
Next Steps:
- Review findings: /research-document REF-022 REF-075 REF-076
- Generate citations: /research-cite REF-022
- Check corpus health: /research-status
Workflow log: .aiwg/research/workflows/wf-20260203-143000.log
```
## Workflow State
All workflows track state for resumption:
```yaml
# .aiwg/research/workflows/wf-20260203-143000-state.yaml
workflow_id: wf-20260203-143000
workflow_name: discovery-to-corpus
status: complete
started_at: "2026-02-03T14:30:00Z"
completed_at: "2026-02-03T14:35:25Z"
stages:
- name: discovery
status: complete
started_at: "2026-02-03T14:30:00Z"
completed_at: "2026-02-03T14:30:15Z"
output:
papers: 10
selected: [1, 2, 4]
- name: acquisition
status: complete
started_at: "2026-02-03T14:30:20Z"
completed_at: "2026-02-03T14:31:02Z"
output:
acquired: [REF-022, REF-075, REF-076]
... (stages 3-5)
metrics:
duration_seconds: 325
tokens_consumed: 45230
api_calls: 27
success_rate: 1.0
```
## Custom Workflows
Define custom workflows in YAML:
```yaml
# custom-workflow.yaml
name: focused-acquisition
description: Acquire and document specific papers
stages:
- name: acquisition
agent: acquisition-agent
inputs:
- doi_list
- name: documentation
agent: documentation-agent
inputs:
- from: acquisition.acquired
- name: quality
agent: quality-agent
inputs:
- from: acquisition.acquired
gates:
- stage: quality
type: approval
message: "Review quality assessments"
```
Execute:
```bash
/research-workflow custom-workflow.yaml --input '{"doi_list": ["10.1234/example"]}'
```
## References
- @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/research-complete/agents/workflow-agent.md - Workflow Agent
- @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/research-complete/workflows/ - Workflow definitions
- @$AIWG_ROOT/src/research/services/workflow-service.ts - Workflow orchestration
- @.aiwg/research/workflows/ - Workflow state and logs
- @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/rules/hitl-gates.md - Human gate patternsRelated Skills
research-status
Show research corpus health and statistics
research-query
Search the local research corpus, read matching findings, and synthesize an answer with inline citations to REF-XXX sources. The "query" operation for the research pipeline.
research-quality
Assess source quality using GRADE methodology
research-quality-audit
Audit research corpus for shallow stubs, incomplete sections, missing source files, and doc depth issues. Detects docs written from abstracts rather than full papers and optionally auto-dispatches expansion agents.
research-provenance
Query provenance chains and artifact relationships
research-lint
Run the research corpus lint ruleset to detect structural and referential integrity issues — orphan notes, missing frontmatter, broken references, missing GRADE assessments.
research-gap
Analyze gaps in research coverage
research-gap-detect
Build the mutual citation graph, find connected components, identify isolated clusters, and optionally search for bridge candidates and file gap issues. Automates the manual cluster analysis workflow.
research-document
Generate summaries and literature notes from research papers
research-discover
Search for research papers across academic databases
research-cite
Generate properly formatted citation from research corpus
research-archive
Package research artifacts for long-term archival