⛔ This skill MUST be read in full — not skimmed. Formal review gates depend on its workflow.
Skipping steps silently bypasses quality checks. Missing gates = undetected breakages.

Research Verification — Adversarial Review Gate

Overview

Ensures every research investigation includes adversarial review — disconfirming queries, assumption challenges, and source verification. Thin wrapper — delegates to the research skill's built-in adversarial gate.

Announce at start: "I'm using the research-verification skill to run adversarial review."

Invoked by test-routing when domain=research is detected.

When to Use

• Research investigations (market, technical, competitive)
• Decision-support research (architecture choices, tool comparisons)
• Domain exploration (new technology, new market)

When NOT to Use

• Trivial single-fact lookups ("what version of Node?") → skip
• Content-pipeline research (keyword/SERP) → content-verification handles this
• Research already passed adversarial review → skip

Process

Step 1 — Read Domain

Confirm this is a research issue from the test-routing verification plan:

Domain: research

Step 2 — Invoke Adversarial Review

Route to the research skill's adversarial review gate. This runs:

1. Disconfirming queries: Search for evidence that contradicts the research findings
2. Assumption challenge: List all assumptions, challenge each with "what if this is wrong?"
3. Source verification: Check that claims are sourced (internal codebase, external docs, web research)
4. Alternative framings: How might we achieve the same outcome differently?

Step 3 — Verify Gate Completeness

• Disconfirming queries were run (not skipped)
• At least one disconfirming finding was surfaced (if none, flag as P2 — possible confirmation bias)
• Assumptions are tagged with confidence levels
• Sources are cited for key claims

Step 4 — Return Report

## Research Verification Report

**Issue:** #N
**Research topic:** <summary>
**Adversarial queries run:** 3
**Disconfirming findings:** 1

### Adversarial Findings
| Query | Finding | Impact |
|-------|---------|--------|
| "What are alternatives to X?" | Y is a viable alternative not considered | Medium — should be added to research brief |

### Assumption Check
| Assumption | Confidence | Challenged? |
|------------|-----------|-------------|
| "Supabase scales to 1M users" | medium | Yes — found counterexample at 500K |
| "Playwright is faster than Cypress" | high | Yes — confirmed by benchmarks |

### Verdict
**PASS** — adversarial review complete. 1 disconfirming finding surfaced.

Pipeline Handoff

Invoked by: test-routing (domain=research)
Dispatches to: research skill (adversarial review gate)
Consumed by: code-review (verification gate check)

What Fails If You Skip

Skip	Consequence
Disconfirming queries	Research confirms existing bias — missed alternatives, unchallenged assumptions
Assumption challenge	Untracked assumptions become silent design constraints
Source verification	Claims treated as facts without evidence — decisions built on sand

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Continue following the workflow as mandated by this skill. Do not skip steps.