pre-dev-research

Pre-dev research gathers codebase patterns, external best practices, and framework documentation before planning. Run parallel research agents across your greenfield, modification, or integration context to produce a structured research.md file grounding your PRD decisions in actual patterns and proven approaches.

A pre-dev research document contains metadata, executive summary, synthesis of findings, codebase references with file:line citations, external URLs, and framework version constraints. This structured output ensures your PRD and TRD decisions reflect real constraints and documented best practices.

Pre-dev research operates in three modes: greenfield for new features, modification for changes to existing code, and integration for incorporating external systems. Each mode dispatches agents to collect relevant patterns and documentation for your specific context.

Gate 0 research prevents PRDs and TRDs from diverging from real codebase patterns and framework capabilities. By grounding planning in actual code references and external benchmarks upfront, you avoid discovering constraints or better patterns after design work is complete.

Pre-dev research agents analyze framework documentation and codebase usage to capture version constraints relevant to your feature. These constraints appear in the research output, ensuring your PRD accounts for compatibility requirements and deprecation timelines.