Read The Damn Docs

Do not guess where authoritative docs can answer the question. The most common right move is to web-search for the current official docs, open the relevant pages, and read them before coding. For APIs, versions, provider behavior, config, limits, lifecycle hooks, or security-sensitive flows, ground the answer in what the docs actually say.

Docs-First Triggers

Read docs before proceeding when any of these are true:

• The user asks for "latest", "current", "official", "supported", "best practice", "recommended", "today", "now", or "look it up".
• The needed docs are not already in the repo or supplied by the user. Search the web for the official docs rather than hoping model memory is current.
• The task adds, upgrades, configures, or imports a package, SDK, framework, plugin, CLI, model, cloud resource, or provider integration.
• The API is fast-moving or version-sensitive: AI SDKs, OpenAI/Anthropic/Google APIs, Next.js, React, Tailwind, Vite, Nitro, Drizzle, Prisma, Stripe, GitHub, Slack, Notion, browser APIs, deployment platforms, auth libraries, and similar.
• The implementation depends on auth, OAuth scopes, permissions, secrets, webhooks, billing, payments, PII, encryption, data retention, migrations, retries, rate limits, quotas, caching, deploys, or compliance.
• An error mentions deprecation, unknown options, missing exports, invalid config, unsupported fields, changed defaults, or version mismatch.
• A repo has local docs, ADRs, generated schemas, OpenAPI specs, route/action registries, design-system docs, or package-level READMEs that could define the contract.
• The choice is expensive to reverse: public wire formats, database schema, migration strategy, persistent IDs, event names, customer-visible behavior, or external automation contracts.
• You catch yourself about to write "usually", "probably", "I think", "from memory", or code copied from model memory for an external API.