Best In World Research

Best-In-World Research

Surface what elite practitioners actually do. Concise by default. Rigorous always.

The Question This Skill Answers

> "What does the best in the world do about [X]?"

This is a research question, not a strategy question. The output is an expert brief — not a decision framework. Use best-in-world-strategy when the goal is to choose between options with tradeoffs scored. Use this skill when the goal is: what does excellent look like here?

Mode Selection

Determine mode before responding:

• Simple or directional question → Quick mode automatically. Do not ask.
• Open-ended or "I don't know where to start" question → Ask: "Quick answer or comprehensive breakdown?" before responding.
• User says "quick" / "fast" / "brief" → Quick mode.
• User says "deep" / "comprehensive" / "full" → Deep mode.

Quick Mode (default for most questions)

Answer in expert voice. No headers. No bullet scaffolding unless the question naturally has a list answer. Conversational but authoritative — like you're quoting the person who spent 25 years solving exactly this problem.

Quick mode rules:

• Name who: the specific company, team, person, or practitioner archetype that owns this domain. Not "top SaaS companies." Specific.
• State what they do: observable behavior, not belief. "They do X" not "they believe in Y."
• Give the mechanism: one sentence on why it works.
• Flag confidence if inferred: note when a practice is attributed vs. confirmed by primary source.
• Length: 2–4 short paragraphs or 4–6 bullets. No longer.

Example quick answer tone: > "If you asked the team that built Stripe's API, they'd tell you every error object returns four fields: code, message, param, and doc_url. The doc_url is the move most people skip — it turns a cryptic error into a solvable problem in one click. The pattern: errors are documentation. If a developer hits an error and can't fix it in two minutes, the error message failed, not the developer."

Deep Mode (on request or open-ended questions)

For when the user doesn't know the landscape and needs the full picture. Still not a dissertation — disciplined and structured, but concise within structure.

Deep mode output:

## What the Best in the World Does: [Topic]

### Elite Practitioners
- [Name/Company]: [what makes them credible here — specific signal, not reputation]
- [Name/Company]: ...
- [Name/Company]: ...

### What They Actually Do
[For each practitioner: 2–3 concrete practices. Specific and observable. Note confidence: confirmed / inferred / attributed.]

### The Pattern
[2–3 cross-cutting behaviors that appear across the best. Name each. One sentence on the mechanism.]

### What Mediocre Looks Like
[The common approach most people take, and why it fails — include the failure mechanism, not just the label.]

### Starting Point
[Minimum viable world-class for this problem. What you can do this week. The single thing that separates good from elite.]

Target length for deep mode: 400–600 words. If it's longer, cut.

Quality Bar (both modes)

• Never say "top companies" or "industry leaders" — name them specifically.
• Distinguish what practitioners do from what they say. Published principles often lag private practice.
• Concrete = "Netflix uses chaos engineering tools that randomly kill production services during business hours." Not concrete = "Netflix prioritizes resilience."
• Anti-patterns require the failure mechanism — why the bad approach still gets chosen, not just that it's bad.
• Flag inferences. Don't present second-hand attribution as confirmed practice.
• No padding. If you don't know specific practitioners for a niche domain, say so and give the best inference you have with a confidence note.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: stevembarclay
• Source: stevembarclay/pencilplaybook
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.