Research Organization Quick Reference

1-Page Summary | See Full Proposal for details

---

6 Research Categories

Category	Purpose	Example Topics
Technology Evaluation	Assess external tools/frameworks for integration	agent-labs, copilotkit, codex
Academic Research	Extract patterns from academic papers	scaling-agent-systems, continual-learning
Competitive Intelligence	Monitor competitors and market positioning	anthropic-cowork, palantir, kimi-2.5
Business & Market	Validate market opportunity and business models	product-market-fit, financial-model
Domain Research	Industry-specific workflows and compliance	bioscience-workorders, healthcare, regulatory
Process & Internal	CODITECT process improvements	system-prompt, docker-registry

---

4 Lifecycle Stages

Stage 1: STAGING                 → analyze-new-artifacts/        (gitignored)
    ↓
Stage 2: ANALYSIS                → internal/analysis/{category}/ (git-tracked)
    ↓
Stage 3: INTEGRATION             → internal/architecture/        (git-tracked)
                                   internal/research/
    ↓
Stage 4: ARCHIVE                 → internal/research/archive/    (git-tracked)

---

Promotion Decision Matrix

Artifact	Staging → Analysis	Analysis → Integration	Condition
Executive Summary	✅ Always	❌ Never	Research complete
Assessment Doc	✅ Always	❌ Never	Quality validated
SDD	⚠️ If referenced	✅ If Go decision	ADR approved
TDD	⚠️ If referenced	✅ If Go decision	ADR approved
ADR	⚠️ If referenced	✅ When finalized	Status: Accepted/Rejected
C4 Diagrams	⚠️ If referenced	✅ If Go decision	ADR approved
Business Case	✅ Always	✅ Always	Complete
Financial Model	✅ Always	✅ Always	Validated
Glossary	⚠️ If domain-specific	✅ If reusable	10+ terms
Dashboards (JSX)	❌ Rarely	❌ Rarely	Only if reusable
Source Materials	❌ Rarely	❌ Rarely	Only if proprietary

---

Permanent Directory Structure

internal/
├── analysis/                    # Stage 2: Assessments
│   ├── technology-evaluation/
│   ├── academic/
│   ├── competitive-intelligence/
│   ├── business-market/
│   ├── domain/
│   └── process-internal/
│
├── architecture/                # Stage 3: Architecture
│   ├── adrs/
│   ├── integrations/{topic}/
│   ├── domain/{industry}/
│   └── academic-patterns/
│
└── research/                    # Stage 3: Research
    ├── business/
    ├── market-research/
    ├── domain/{industry}/
    ├── source-materials/
    └── archive/                 # Stage 4: Historical

---

File Naming Conventions

File Type	Pattern	Example
Assessment	{topic}-assessment-YYYY-MM-DD.md	agent-labs-assessment-2026-02-16.md
Executive Summary	executive-summary.md	(standard name)
SDD	SDD-{topic}-integration.md	SDD-agent-labs-integration.md
TDD	TDD-{topic}-integration.md	TDD-agent-labs-integration.md
ADR	ADR-XXX-{topic}-{decision}.md	ADR-207-agent-labs-adoption.md
Business Case	{topic}-business-case-YYYY-MM-DD.md	product-market-fit-business-case-2026-02-16.md
Financial Model	{topic}_v{X}.{Y}.xlsx	financial-model_v3.1.xlsx
Manifest	MANIFEST.md	(standard name, all topics)

---

Manifest Contents (Required Fields)

## Metadata
- Research Date
- Researcher
- Category
- Pipeline (Manual / ADR-206)
- Status (Active / Integrated / Archived)

## Research Objective
[What question was this research answering?]

## Source Materials
[PDFs, transcripts, GitHub repos, URLs]

## Generated Artifacts
[Phase 1: markdown, Phase 2: dashboards, Phase 3: ADRs]

## Integration Summary
- Go/No-Go decision
- Integrated components
- Remaining in staging

## Follow-up Actions
[Task IDs, implementation TODOs]

---

Promotion Commands (Proposed)

# Promote to analysis
/research-promote --topic "agent-labs" --to analysis

# Promote to integration (after Go decision)
/research-promote --topic "agent-labs" --to integration --artifacts sdd,tdd,adrs

# Archive superseded research
/research-archive --topic "palantir-2025" --reason "superseded by palantir-2026"

# Generate manifest
/generate-manifest --topic "agent-labs" --category "technology-evaluation"

# ADR-206 pipeline with auto-promotion
/research-pipeline "agent-labs" \
  --urls https://example.com \
  --github https://github.com/org/repo \
  --genesis \          # Handoff to /new-project
  --auto-promote       # Auto-promote to analysis + integration

---

Migration Strategy (98 Existing Directories)

Phase	Action	Duration
1. Categorize	Auto-assign categories	1 day
2. Assess	Human review: promote/archive/delete	5 days
3. Promote	Semi-automated promotion (30 dirs)	2 days
4. Archive	Manual archive (20 dirs)	1 day
5. Delete	Grace period + auto-delete (48 dirs)	90 days

Result: 98 dirs → 13 active + 40 permanent (30 analysis + 15 archive) + 48 deleted

---

ADR-206 Integration

Pipeline Outputs (Phase 1-3):

• 9 markdown artifacts (quick-start, SDD, TDD, glossary, mermaid, ADRs, etc.)
• 4-6 JSX dashboards (tech analyzer, strategic fit, integration playbook, etc.)
• 15-25 follow-up prompts

Enhanced with This Proposal:

• ✅ MANIFEST.md auto-generated
• ✅ --auto-promote flag for immediate promotion to analysis
• ✅ --category auto-detection from inputs
• ✅ Integration handoff (if --genesis flag)

---

Key Metrics

Metric	Before	After
Staging Clutter	98 dirs	≤13 active
Searchable Research	20%	100%
Artifact Loss	80%	0%
Git Repo Size	+6.1GB	+200MB

---

When to Use Each Stage

Stage 1: STAGING (analyze-new-artifacts/)

• ✅ Active research in progress
• ✅ Work-in-progress artifacts
• ✅ Source materials (PDFs, transcripts)
• ✅ Generated drafts (pipelines, manual sessions)
• ❌ Anything needing permanent reference

Stage 2: ANALYSIS (internal/analysis/)

• ✅ Completed research with findings
• ✅ Executive summaries
• ✅ Assessment documents (synthesis)
• ✅ Recommendations
• ❌ SDDs/TDDs/ADRs (those go to Stage 3)

Stage 3: INTEGRATION (internal/architecture/ or internal/research/)

• ✅ Adopted SDDs/TDDs
• ✅ Finalized ADRs (Accepted/Rejected)
• ✅ Business cases
• ✅ Financial models
• ✅ Domain glossaries
• ✅ Reusable patterns
• ❌ Research-specific artifacts

Stage 4: ARCHIVE (internal/research/archive/)

• ✅ Superseded research
• ✅ Deprecated technology evaluations
• ✅ Reversed decisions
• ✅ Time-sensitive research (aged out)
• ❌ Anything currently relevant

---

Decision Tree

Is research complete?
    NO  → Stay in STAGING
    YES ↓

Is assessment document written?
    NO  → Research incomplete, stay in STAGING
    YES ↓ Promote to ANALYSIS

Is there a Go decision (ADR approved)?
    NO  → Stay in ANALYSIS (assessment only)
    YES ↓ Promote SDDs/TDDs/ADRs to INTEGRATION

Is research time-sensitive?
    NO  → Stay in ANALYSIS indefinitely
    YES ↓

Is research > 12 months old and not refreshed?
    NO  → Stay in ANALYSIS
    YES ↓ ARCHIVE (with superseded_by reference)

---

Example: Agent Labs Research Flow

Staging (analyze-new-artifacts/agent-labs/):

• arXiv paper PDF
• Generated artifacts (SDD, TDD, 3 ADRs, 4 dashboards)
• Pipeline report

Analysis (internal/analysis/technology-evaluation/agent-labs/):

• agent-labs-assessment-2026-02-16.md (human-written synthesis)
• executive-summary.md (promoted from staging)
• MANIFEST.md (lineage tracking)
• README.md (navigation)

Integration (internal/architecture/integrations/agent-labs/):

• SDD-agent-labs-integration.md
• TDD-agent-labs-integration.md
• c4-diagrams/ (context, container, component)

Integration (internal/architecture/adrs/):

• ADR-207-agent-labs-adoption.md
• ADR-208-agent-labs-integration-pattern.md
• ADR-209-agent-orchestration-mapping.md

Staging (remains):

• arXiv paper PDF (source material)
• Glossary (topic-specific)
• Dashboards (research-specific)

---

Success Criteria

✅ Any contributor can find research via manifest index ✅ SDDs/TDDs/ADRs reused across projects ✅ ADR-206 pipeline outputs directly to permanent locations ✅ Clear rules for promotion/archival (no ambiguity) ✅ Manifest system self-documenting, low maintenance ✅ Zero loss of valuable artifacts ✅ 87% reduction in staging clutter

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Full Proposal: research-artifact-organization-taxonomy-proposal-2026-02-16.md

Status: Proposed — 2026-02-16 Author: Claude (Sonnet 4.5)