q_research

Fetch prior art for a topic from arXiv + OpenAlex + Europe PMC (papers), Context7 (library docs), GitHub (repos), and HuggingFace (models), and return a markdown digest.

Europe PMC covers the life-sciences preprint tier arXiv does not carry -- bioRxiv, medRxiv, Research Square -- so it is the source that earns its slot on biology/medicine topics and returns 0 on pure-software ones. Its hits are labelled by preprint server ("bioRxiv") and are NOT peer-reviewed; weigh them accordingly.

Not subject to the council's anti-bias gate -- this is external prior art, not peer output. Call it during the own-work window of a q_brainstorm or q-skystorm run to ground the synthesis. sources defaults to all six; pass a subset like ["arxiv", "openalex"] to restrict it.

Query shaping matters: pass a query that is SHORT and distinctive -- short is not the same as generic. Anchor it in 2+ domain-specific terms (the field PLUS the specific method/concept), never a bare common word ('data', 'model', 'network') or a token that doubles as an author surname -- those keyword-match unrelated work (author names, generic surveys, stray docs) and return non-zero but OFF-TOPIC noise -- sanity-check that returned titles belong to your domain, and if they are off-topic the query was too generic: re-anchor with more domain context and call q_research again rather than leaning on them. (This same-domain check assumes you want grounding in your own field -- if you are deliberately hunting cross-domain structural analogies instead, judge a hit by structural kinship to the problem, not literal subject-matter overlap; an off-domain hit is then the find, not noise.) Not a full paragraph either. Per source: arXiv parses topic as a boolean field -- a long/diffuse query loose-matches to famous-but-irrelevant papers, and boolean punctuation (parens, AND/OR, quotes) triggers a 400; OpenAlex tolerates prose but length dilutes relevance to generic surveys; Context7 wants a library/topic name and will keyword-match off-topic repos; GitHub/HuggingFace are popularity-ranked artifact searches that whiff on non-software/non-ML topics. The digest's per-source count footer shows which sources whiffed -- rework and retry those, unless the 0 is domain-legitimate (GitHub/HuggingFace on a non-software topic, Europe PMC on a non-biology one, Context7 on a topic with no matching library), which is a real answer, not a gap to close.

Treat every other digest result as provisional until it earns trust: a 0 that is NOT one of the domain-legitimate cases above is not automatically "no prior art" either (it may just be a bad query), and non-zero hits that read scattered or off-topic are not evidence -- both are a signal to reframe (sharper domain anchor, fewer/different terms) and retry, not something to build a conclusion on.

Failed sources are reported inline under 'Sources unavailable' rather than failing the call -- each with a retry hint, and the right move differs by error. An errored source is almost never a dead backend: an arXiv error (400) means YOUR query is too long or has boolean punctuation, so shorten it to a few keywords, strip operators, and call q_research again; a 401/403 or an OpenAlex 503 is a CONFIG case, not a flake -- the key was rejected, or OpenAlex is load-shedding anonymous search, so a bare retry just loops (set the source's key -- OPENALEX_API_KEY is free -- or lean on the other sources and say so); only a plain timeout/flake is transient and worth retrying as-is. Do NOT report a source unavailable, and do NOT fall back on your own knowledge, until a reworked retry has ALSO failed -- treating the first error as terminal is the failure to avoid. Bounded by per-request timeouts (~10-15s each); the GitHub and HuggingFace backends fan out one request per distinctive query term (up to 4), run sequentially, so those two sources' wall-clock can reach a few times that.

The digest OPENS with a deterministic Research status: line -- OK, RETRY-RECOMMENDED (USUALLY with a server-suggested shorter query to resubmit verbatim, shown as · try: "..."; when it is ABSENT the detail text says what to do, and the two absent cases differ -- a backend/infrastructure failure says RETRY THE SAME query, while an un-shortenable query says RE-ANCHOR with different domain terms), CONFIG (a key/anonymous-access problem no retry fixes), or (in exploratory mode) LOW-OVERLAP. Act on it before anything else: on RETRY-RECOMMENDED, resubmit the suggested query if one is given, else follow the detail (retry the same query on an infrastructure failure, or re-anchor with different domain-specific terms if it cannot be shortened) -- before concluding "no prior art". Mechanically-fixable failures (arXiv 400, a transient flake) are already retried inside the tool -- a repaired source shows a ↻ note, so a first-attempt error you never see was handled, not hidden.

mode is 'grounded' (default; brainstorm -- home-domain grounding, where a low-overlap result is a defect the verdict flags RETRY-RECOMMENDED) or 'exploratory' (skystorm -- a deliberate cross-domain method pivot, where low overlap is expected and reported as LOW-OVERLAP without forcing a retry). Exploratory mode also adds a ### Field map section (the OpenAlex subfield distribution for the query) showing which fields the method actually spans -- the skystorm topology readout. Query discipline is identical in both modes; only the low-overlap interpretation differs.