Autoresearch Goal

This is a Hermes-native autoresearch-goal workflow skill.

Why This Exists

autoresearch-goal exists to keep research work explicit, evidence-backed, and inside the Hermes/executor boundary instead of relying on ad hoc chat narration.

Do Not Use When

• The request is casual chat, a status-only acknowledgement, or another workflow has stronger routing evidence.
• The user needs implementation, review, CI, merge, or external publishing evidence that has not been delegated or observed.

Examples

Good example:

• Prompt: autoresearch-goal: keep researching AI agent memory practices until the evidence gaps are closed or logged.
• Expected behavior: Run a durable research loop with critic checks, source gaps, and a stop or checkpoint condition.
• Why: The request is research that needs persistence and review, not a one-shot brief.

Bad example:

• Prompt: autoresearch-goal: treat casual chat or unaccepted work as if this workflow already produced verified results.
• Expected behavior: Ask a clarification question or route to a narrower workflow instead of forcing autoresearch-goal.
• Why: The request lacks the required inputs or would overclaim work that Hermes did not observe.

Completion Checklist

• The research question, source boundaries, recency assumptions, and confidence level are named.
• Observed sources, inference, synthesis, and unresolved retrieval gaps are separated.
• Follow-up planning or handoff uses the research summary without calling it execution evidence.

Recovery Notes

• If sources cannot be accessed, state the retrieval gap and use only observed local context.
• If evidence is thin or one-sided, lower confidence and ask for a narrower source boundary.

Workflow Lane

• Current lane: Research and company ops (source-finder, research, best-practice-research, autoresearch-goal, research-brief, strategy-brief, feedback-triage, research-department, +13 more) - research, signals, ops, and briefings.
• If intent belongs to another lane, hand back to oh-my-hermes or name the adjacent workflow.
• Shared product, routing, compatibility, and evidence rules: omh-routing/references/skill-common-rail.md.

Use When

Use for validator-gated research that needs durable artifacts.

Strong routing signals: autoresearch-goal, research goal, durable research, critic research

Catalog Metadata

Category: research Phase: durable-research Hermes role: researcher Quality tier: validator-gated Reasoning demand: standard

Quality bar:

• Define validator criteria before gathering evidence.
• Run each cycle as evidence-gap closure: name the open gaps the cycle targets, then stop at the validator criteria or the declared iteration budget, whichever comes first.
• Keep durable research artifacts separate from coding execution evidence.
• Stop with next questions or a source-backed synthesis when validation is incomplete.

Handoff policy:

Keep durable research in Hermes-managed artifacts; do not convert to executor handoff unless the research produces an accepted coding task.

Required inputs:

• research objective
• validator criteria
• source boundaries

Expected outputs:

• research artifact
• validator result
• next questions

Artifact expectations:

• durable research ledger or checklist

Safety rules:

• Do not imply hidden Hermes runtime behavior.
• Use the smallest verification that can prove the claim.

Runtime Evidence

Preferred harness for this skill: research.

sh
omh runtime record --skill autoresearch-goal --harness research --status started

Record observed delegation results; otherwise return not_available or not_observed. Prepared OMH routing is not execution, review, CI, merge-readiness, or merge evidence.

• Treat wrapper memory/context summaries as advisory local context, not proof of opaque Hermes memory reads or changes.

Preserve workflow intent and stop conditions; verify before claiming completion.

Use Hermes-native subagent/delegation features when available: native subagents -> Hermes delegation when available, otherwise sequential lanes.

Shared product, compatibility, topology, memory, harness, and execution rules: omh-routing/references/skill-common-rail.md. Load it when applicable; otherwise name an unavailable capability.