Technical Research

Overview

Systematic technical research for staff-level software engineering decisions. Gather evidence, synthesize findings, and present actionable recommendations.

Research Workflow

1. Scope the Question

Before searching, clarify:

• What decision does this research inform?
• What constraints exist (language, framework, team expertise)?
• What "good enough" looks like, avoid rabbit holes

2. Gather Evidence

Use multiple sources in parallel:

Web search, current state, recent changes, community sentiment

WebSearch: "[topic] 2026" or "[library] vs [alternative]"

Documentation, authoritative specs and APIs

Context7: resolve-library-id then query-docs
WebFetch: official docs, RFCs, specifications

Codebase, existing patterns and constraints

Grep/Glob: how similar problems are solved today

3. Evaluate Sources

Weight sources by reliability:

1. Official documentation, specs, RFCs
2. Maintainer statements, changelogs, release notes
3. Reputable tech blogs, conference talks
4. Community discussions (HN, Reddit, Discord)
5. AI-generated content, outdated tutorials

Red flags: No date, no author, SEO-heavy content, contradicts official docs

4. Synthesize Findings

Structure output for decision-making:

## Summary

[1-2 sentence answer to the core question]

## Key Findings

- Finding 1 (source)
- Finding 2 (source)
- Finding 3 (source)

## Comparison (if applicable)

| Criterion    | Option A | Option B |
| ------------ | -------- | -------- |
| [Key factor] | ...      | ...      |

## Recommendation

[Clear recommendation with rationale]

## Open Questions

[What remains uncertain, what to monitor]

5. Cite Sources

Always include sources:

Sources:

- [Official Docs](url)
- [Relevant Article](url)

Research Patterns

Library/Framework Evaluation

Investigate:

1. Maintenance, Last release, commit frequency, issue response time
2. Adoption, npm downloads, GitHub stars, production users
3. Documentation, Quality, examples, migration guides
4. Bundle size, For frontend, check bundlephobia
5. TypeScript, Native support or @types package quality
6. Breaking changes, Major version history, upgrade difficulty

API/Service Comparison

Investigate:

1. Pricing, Free tier limits, scaling costs
2. Rate limits, Requests/second, daily quotas
3. Latency, P50/P99, geographic distribution
4. Reliability, SLA, status page history
5. Auth, OAuth, API keys, complexity
6. SDK quality, Official vs community, maintenance

Architectural Decisions

Investigate:

1. Prior art, How do similar systems solve this?
2. Trade-offs, What does each approach sacrifice?
3. Reversibility, How hard to change later?
4. Team fit, Existing expertise, learning curve
5. Operational cost, Monitoring, debugging, scaling

Reference Material

For detailed research patterns and techniques, see:

• references/patterns.md, Common research scenarios with examples

See Also

• /adr: Research informs the decision; ADR captures it
• skills/FRAMEWORKS.md: Full framework index
• RECIPE.md: Agent recipe for parallel decomposition (2 workers)