autonomous-investigation
The protocol behind every investigation skill. Use when AI research must proceed without you: search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, confidence stacking, diffable outputs.
npx skills add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills --skill autonomous-investigation --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# 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,
- Purpose
- Input
- Key Concepts
- Two protocols, two jobs
- The contract
- The Confidence Stacking Rule
- Guardrails
- Application
- For skills implementing this protocol
- For agents running an investigation
- Examples
- Common Pitfalls
- References
What does the autonomous-investigation skill do?
The protocol behind every investigation skill. Use when AI research must proceed without you: search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, confidence stacking, diffable outputs.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills --skill autonomous-investigation --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills, a repository with 6,255 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.