# Playbook 01 — Research

**Trigger.** An idea, technology or approach worth investigating before it is committed to
design. Also: an as-is document that raises a question nobody can answer.

**Who runs it.** Anyone.

## Steps

1. Take the next free number: highest `01-RESEARCH/NNN-*` plus one, zero-padded to three
   digits. Never skip or reuse a number.
2. Create `01-RESEARCH/NNN-descriptive-name/` and a `status.md` in it carrying:

   ```yaml
   ---
   status: active
   initiated: YYYY-MM-DD
   touches: []          # areas, subsystems or as-is design docs the effort bears on
   ---
   ```

   Then a short prose summary: **what** is being investigated, **why**, and **what it
   touches**.
3. Do the research in further documents in the same folder — notes, option analyses, evidence,
   draft designs. Anything goes. Keep the summary in `status.md` current as the effort changes
   shape.

## What makes research worth reading

State evidence, not assertion. *"Zero of 124 modules declare `brain` as a dependency"*
outranks *"the dependency rule is not followed"*. An effort that measured nothing has not
finished.

Research describes real observations but never identifies the mesh it observed. The shape of a
finding survives anonymisation intact — *a node publicly named but behind a household NAT*
carries the whole lesson without naming anything.

## Do not

- Do not put status in prose. It lives in `status.md`'s frontmatter, and the prose must not restate it.
- Do not set `became:` while the effort is open — playbook 02 sets it at closure.
- Do not write into `02-DESIGN` from an open effort.

## Closing

An effort never just stops. It closes through playbook [02](02-graduation.md) as `graduated`
or `abandoned`, always with `became:` pointing at what it turned into. Nothing is deleted —
what was rejected, and why, is the more expensive half to rediscover.