A research question becomes a shared, citable note

Press Release

A person asks abcd a research question and gets a shared note their decisions can cite. The person types the research command with a question, and with sources if they have some. An agent runs the librarian's engine on it, the person reads the private result, and once they approve, abcd writes a dated research note into the project: the question, the ranked findings and the public sources each rests on. It arrives uncommitted, so it is shared only when the person commits it.

"Before choosing how players trade, I asked for the state of the art in local multiplayer economies," said Iris, a product lead. "The note went into the project, and the design decision cites it, so the team can check what we leaned on."

Why This Matters

A managed repository asked abcd for a command that researches a question and keeps the result as a research note a decision can cite (iss-2610100649495706). The librarian's reading pack is private by design, so a shared decision cannot cite it. The product thinker ruled on 2026-10-14 that the research ideate needs is agent-driven (the librarian), and that the shared note is human-driven, by a command the person types: research, on the same engine.

What's In Scope

• The research command (/abcd:research <question>, a page for people) and the verb that writes the note from an approved pack.
• The note's shape and where it lives: .abcd/development/research/notes/, cited by its path.

What's Out of Scope

• The engine and the pack (itd-2610141646126492).
• Committing the note: that is the person's act.

Mechanism

We expect shared research to be checkable because a decision can cite a note whose every finding names its public source, and the note is written only from a pack whose quotes matched their filed text. Shown wrong if a committed note holds a finding without a public source, or text from a source the person handed over as private.

Scope Conditions

• The note carries only what may be shared: findings from public sources, brief quotes within each source's terms, and no material from a source the person handed over as private or from a corpus source in the confidential class that has not been flipped to citable.
• The person's approval is a question in the session; the guarantee that nothing is shared without them is that the note arrives uncommitted.

Acceptance Criteria

• Given a question, when the person runs the research command, then an agent records a reading pack for it, and the person is shown the ranked findings before anything is written to the project.
• Given the person's approval of a pack, or of chosen items, when the note is written, then it lands uncommitted under .abcd/development/research/notes/ with the date, the question, the ranked findings and each finding's public source.
• Given a pack item from a source the person handed over as private, or from a confidential corpus source not flipped to citable, when the note is written, then the item is left out and the person is told how many were.
• Given a note about to be written, when a finding holds a banned phrase or a name the redactor finds, then writing the note is refused, naming the finding.
• Given a committed note, when an intent or ADR cites it by path, then the record gates resolve the citation.

Prior Art

• iss-2610100649495706 (open): the request this delivers.
• The research notes under .abcd/development/research/notes/: the existing, hand-written home of such notes.
• itd-36 (shipped): host-composed content, binary-checked, the same split.

Open Questions

• The verb that writes the note from a pack (technical facilitator, at planning).

Audit Notes

Empty. Populated by intent-auditor when intent moves to shipped/.