discovery

name: discovery description: "Research and discovery workflow for document deliverables — competitive analyses, architecture comparisons, ADR scaffolding, literature reviews, vendor evaluations. No TDD requirement. Phases: gathering → synthesizing → completed. Triggers: 'discover', 'research', 'explore topic', or /exarchos:discover." metadata: author: exarchos version: 1.0.0 mcp-server: exarchos category: workflow phase-affinity: gathering

Discovery Workflow Skill

A workflow type for tasks whose deliverable is a document, not code. It carries no verification gates (nothing to test), so the verification ladder does not apply.

When to Use

• Competitive analyses and market research
• Architecture comparisons and ADR scaffolding
• Literature reviews and vendor evaluations
• Design research that does NOT feed into implementation planning

When NOT to Use

• If the deliverable includes code changes → use /exarchos:oneshot or /exarchos:ideate
• If you need TDD enforcement → use any other workflow type
• If the research feeds directly into implementation → use /exarchos:ideate (which authors the Design & Rationale section of the unified docs/specs/ artifact)

Discover bridge (the deep-rung escalation)

At the deep planning rung, /exarchos:ideate can escalate to this workflow as a first-class, event-linked research pre-pass instead of a manual "go start a new workflow" handoff. The bridge is opt-in (author-confirmed, never auto-run): the affordance is surfaced on next_actions, and the discover_bridge orchestrate action — invoked with confirm: true — stitches this discovery run to the originating spec by a deterministic correlationId (recorded as a state.patched link event on the feature stream). When you run a discovery escalated this way, cite the report path in the spec's ## Design & Rationale → Exploration section, and init this workflow with the bridge's correlationId so provenance spans both documents.

Phases

Phase 1: Gathering (initial)

Collect sources, references, and raw material for the deliverable.

1. Define the research question or deliverable scope
2. Identify and collect sources (URLs, documents, code references)
3. Record sources in workflow state:

mcp__plugin_exarchos_exarchos__exarchos_workflow({
  action: "update", featureId: "<id>",
  updates: { "artifacts.sources": ["<source1>", "<source2>", "..."] }
})

4. Create an outline of the deliverable

Transition: When artifacts.sources is a non-empty array → synthesizing

Phase 2: Synthesizing

Draft the deliverable document from gathered sources.

1. Write the document based on gathered sources and outline
2. Commit the document to the repo (typically under docs/research/ or docs/designs/)
3. Record the report path:

mcp__plugin_exarchos_exarchos__exarchos_workflow({
  action: "update", featureId: "<id>",
  updates: { "artifacts.report": "<path-to-document>" }
})

Transition: When artifacts.report is set → completed

Optional: Escalation to Implementation

If discovery surfaces an implementation need:

1. Note the finding in the report
2. After completing the discovery workflow, start a new workflow:

   /exarchos:ideate <implementation-topic>
   

   Reference the discovery report as design input.

Event Emissions

Optionally emit events at key moments for observability:

mcp__plugin_exarchos_exarchos__exarchos_event({
  action: "append", stream: "<featureId>",
  event: { type: "discovery.sources_collected", data: { sourceCount: N } }
})

mcp__plugin_exarchos_exarchos__exarchos_event({
  action: "append", stream: "<featureId>",
  event: { type: "discovery.report_committed", data: { path: "<report-path>" } }
})