research-project-orienter

To build a context map, this Skill reads the .research manifests at your project root and produces a concise orientation memo covering research questions, datasets, current stage, and open questions.

Orienting AI in an academic repository involves reading .research manifest files like project_manifest.yml and experiment_matrix.yml, generating an actionable orientation memo without reading source code or PDFs.

Building an orientation memo requires a .research folder at the project root containing the project_manifest.yml file. If missing, you must generate the manifests first before orientation.

The generated orientation memo works alongside research workflows like Zotero, Obsidian, and NotebookLM by providing compact conversation context, but it does not require these tools to function.

The orienter reads required .research/project_manifest.yml and optional manifests like experiment_matrix.yml, data_dictionary.yml, decisions.md, open_questions.md, and run_log.md to understand the repository.

The orientation memo excludes source code, data files, and PDFs to ensure fast, read-only orientation by exclusively consuming pre-processed .research manifest files unless explicitly required.