research-foundation

Foundation research establishes structured sources by prioritizing local rules, repository patterns, and official docs to prevent guesswork and guide domain-specific execution. It breaks down uncertain questions into verifiable evidence inquiries.

A source-ladder check prioritizes verification sources from local rules and repository patterns to official docs and secondary sources. It is needed when tasks require codebase context plus external verification across planning, execution, and review phases.

Decision-ready artifacts like prd.md, artifacts.md, design.md, and execution-plan.md are produced by applying structured research methodology that ensures traceable evidence and source prioritization throughout the research and planning process.

Coordinating product, design, and content-source research requires a foundation-driven approach that reads local rules and official docs first, ensuring structured sources and traceable evidence before planning and execution begin.

Reading local rules and official docs is required to begin foundation research, as the methodology prioritizes these sources first in the ladder to prevent guesswork and establish traceable evidence for domain-specific execution.

Foundation-driven research without external verification risks guesswork, as the methodology requires source-ladder checks across local rules, repository patterns, and official docs to ensure structured sources and traceable evidence for decision-ready syntheses.