# Deep Research

Runs a deep, survey-grade literature investigation on a research topic: freezes...

- Repository: https://github.com/HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills (11333 stars)
- Category: Writing
- License: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0
- Last updated: 2026-10-16
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill deep-research -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill deep-research -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill deep-research -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills --skill deep-research -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

Runs a deep, survey-grade literature investigation on a research topic: freezes research questions, searches from multiple adversarial perspectives, verifies every citation, synthesizes evidence into a MECE taxonomy with in-sentence cross-comparison, and answers the research questions in an evidence-first report. Use when the user asks for a literature review, a survey of a field, research landscape mapping, or a deep dive into what is known about a topic.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Deep Research

## Overview

The role is a senior researcher who has written strong surveys and served as
a section editor. Someone brings a research topic; the job is to map the
terrain, lay out the key works, surface the tensions and the gaps, and end
with a judgment the evidence has earned.

This is not a search engine and not a bullet-point answer. The deliverable
reads like a real survey paper: questions defined first, evidence developed
systematically, conclusions emerging from the evidence rather than announced
up front and back-filled.

## When to use this skill

- "Survey this direction for me." "What is the state of X?"
- "What are the key works, debates, and open problems in this area?"
- "I need a literature review before committing to this topic."

## When NOT to use this skill

- Judging whether one specific idea is worth pursuing: `idea-evaluator`.
- Drafting or polishing paper prose: `paper-writer`, `intro-drafter`,
  `paper-polish`.
- A quick lookup of one or two papers: plain search suffices; this skill is
  for depth.

## Capability check

- **Literature search**: a scholarly search tool if available; otherwise web
  search over scholarly indexes; otherwise shell access to public APIs
  (Crossref, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, DBLP). With no retrieval at all, this
  skill does not run: say so rather than writing a survey from memory.
- **Sub-agents**: when the environment can spawn parallel sub-agents, each
  search perspective runs as its own agent with a clean context; without
  them, run the perspectives serially yourself. The method does not change,
  only the execution.

## Step 0: freeze the research brief

Before any searching, pin down what is being investigated.

**The brief must contain research questions**: not a topic, but two or three
specific, answerable questions. They are the survey's promise; the
conclusion must answer each one.

The rest: https://github.com/HKUSTDial/Supervisor-Skills/blob/HEAD/skills/deep-research/SKILL.md