manbot/skills/research/SKILL.md

Description: PRIMARY SEARCH. Use for deep web research, fact-checking, news gathering, or topical deep dives via the lynx tool. This is the default skill for any query requiring external or up-to-date information.

Research Skill

Deep web research using the text-based browser lynx and DuckDuckGo HTML interface.

When to Use

USE this skill when:

• You need current information from the web.
• You need to deep dive into a topic by following multiple links.
• Fact-checking or verifying news.
• Researching technical documentation or complex subjects.

DON'T use this skill when:

• The information is already available in your training data (unless it's time-sensitive).
• You can solve the task with a simple search and the snippet is enough.

Strategy

Web research is a multi-step process. Do not stop at the first page of search results.

1. Planning: Start with a plan of what you want to research. Plan must be very detailed and logical. Build list of search queries to execute. They have to be logical and cover different aspects of the topic.
2. Search: Execute search queries one by one using lynx -dump command.
3. Analyze: Scan the search results after each query. Identify 2-10 most promising links. If needed go to the next page of search results.
4. Browse: Visit those links one by one.
5. Data Analysis: Analyze the data you have collected. Identify key findings and insights. Find missing information and plan additional search queries. Repeat this step until you have enough information to fulfill the user's request.
6. Recurse: If a page contains a "References" section or promising links to deeper info, follow them.
7. Summarize: Gather all key findings, insights, valuable details and provide a comprehensive response.

!!! IMPORTANT !!! If you think that you dont have enough information to answer the user's request, you can generate new search queries and repeat the process.

Commands

1. Perform a Search

Use DuckDuckGo's HTML or Lite interface with a standard User-Agent to avoid blocks.

lynx -dump "https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=YOUR+SEARCH+QUERY"

2. Browse a URL

lynx -dump "https://example.com/some/path"

How to Navigate Links & Redirects

Links

When you use lynx -dump, the output contains a References section at the bottom. In the main text, numbers in brackets like [1] correspond to these links.

Redirects (e.g., from DuckDuckGo)

DuckDuckGo search results often point to redirect URLs. If lynx -dump returns a page with a "REFRESH" link or just a single link, you MUST follow it to get the actual content.

Example of DDG redirect output:

   REFRESH(0 sec):
   [1]https://actual-destination.com/article

In this case, execute a new search on the URL provided in [1].

Protocol:

• List the URLs from the References section that you want to visit.
• Execute new lynx -dump commands for those URLs.

Guidelines

• Token Efficiency: Web pages contain noise. Focus on the core content. Use specific search queries to find the exact page instead of browsing aimlessly.
• Concise Summaries: In multi-turn research, keep your internal notes concise. Do not repeat raw data if you have already extracted the key points.
• Max Depth: Typically go 1-2 levels deep from the search results.
• Data Extraction: Extract only relevant text. Ignore obvious navigation menus or ads.
• Synthesis: Your final output should not be a raw data dump. It must be a structured, factual answer to the user's initial goal.
• Parallelism: You can plan multiple lynx commands in parallel for different URLs if the Planner allows it.

Example Workflow

User Goal: "Research the current status of the RISC-V ecosystem in 2024."

1. lynx -dump "https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=RISC-V+ecosystem+status+2024"
2. Identify links for "RISC-V International news", "Phoronix RISC-V benchmarks", and "Wikipedia RISC-V".
3. lynx -dump "URL_FROM_PREVIOUS_STEP" for each.
4. Synthesize findings into a categorized report (Hardware, Software Support, Benchmarks, Corporate Adoption).