research-question-refiner

# Research Question Refiner

Transform "I'm interested in X" into "I will investigate whether Y under conditions Z, measuring W."

## The Problem

Most research ideas fail not because they're bad, but because they're:
- Too vague to act on
- Too ambitious to complete
- Too incremental to matter
- Missing a clear success criterion

This skill fixes that.

## Process

### Stage 1: Excavate the Interest

Start by understanding what's actually pulling at you:

**Questions to ask:**
1. What sparked this interest? (Paper, conversation, problem you encountered?)
2. What's the version that excites you most?
3. What would be cool if it worked?
4. Who would care about the answer?

**Output:** A paragraph capturing the raw interest, unfiltered.

### Stage 2: Map the Territory

Before scoping, understand the landscape:

**What's Known:**
- What's the current state-of-the-art?
- What are the established approaches?
- What have people tried that didn't work?

**What's Unknown:**
- What are the acknowledged open problems?
- What assumptions does current work make?
- Where do methods fail?

**What's Controversial:**
- Where do researchers disagree?
- What's claimed but not convincingly shown?
- What's believed but not rigorously tested?

**Output:** A structured map with citations/references for each area.

### Stage 3: Find the Gap

A good research question lives in a gap that is:

| Property | Too Little | Just Right | Too Much |
|----------|-----------|------------|----------|
| **Novelty** | Redoing existing work | New angle or combination | No foundation to build on |
| **Difficulty** | Trivial to answer | Challenging but doable | Requires breakthroughs |
| **Impact** | No one cares | Community would update beliefs | Nobel prize (unrealistic) |
| **Scope** | One experiment | Thesis chapter / paper | Multiple PhDs |

**Gap-finding questions:**
- What would change if we relaxed assumption X?
- What if we applied method A to domain B?
- What's between approach X and approach Y?
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