What problem does it solve?
Research quests often stall because the task framing, dataset split, metric contract, or baseline landscape is ambiguous. This Skill resolves that ambiguity early by scouting papers, repos, and benchmarks so later stages like baseline building and ideation start from a solid, evidence-backed frame.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Bounded Literature Scouting: Searches arXiv, benchmark docs, and official repos with a layered search ladder, reusing durable memory before opening new web searches.
- Evaluation Contract Definition: Produces an explicit statement of task, dataset, split, primary metric, and fair-comparison rules so downstream stages never re-derive them.
- Baseline Shortlisting: Scores candidate baselines on provenance, metric compatibility, implementation availability, and reproduction cost, then recommends an attach, import, reproduce, or reject route.
- Use Case: A researcher starts a new quest with only a vague goal like "improve retrieval on BEIR". The scout checks quest memory, searches arXiv for the benchmark neighborhood, locks the nDCG@10 metric contract, shortlists two reproducible baselines, and records a durable report pointing to the baseline stage.
Quick Start
Use the ds-scout skill to frame my research quest, clarify the dataset and metric contract, and shortlist credible baselines before any implementation work.