Autonomous Investigation Protocol

Purpose

Provide the canonical contract for investigation skills, research the AI performs in the world (web search, published data, public filings) while you review the evidence instead of feeding it context. Where workshop-facilitation governs skills that ask you questions one at a time, this protocol governs skills that proceed without you: they budget their questions, show their plan, label every claim, and produce output stable enough to diff against last quarter's run. That last property is the payoff, an investigation honoring this contract can run as an agent task, in a loop, or on a schedule.

Input

Nothing required, this skill defines the protocol other investigation skills follow. Also useful when invoked standalone: the target of the investigation and, above all, the decision the research should support. Research without a decision is a hobby; every investigation skill asks for the decision because it determines what "just enough" means.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself, text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line, counts as answers already given. Use it, credit it against the question budget, and don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The protocol's whole design is to proceed on best-available evidence with labeled assumptions when nobody answers questions. When another skill references this protocol, that skill's Input section governs what to provide.

Example invocation: Run an autonomous investigation on [TARGET]'s move into workflow automation, this supports our Q3 roadmap bet on the same space.

Key Concepts

Two protocols, two jobs