researching-prior-artlisted

# Researching Prior Art Gather verified external evidence for one technology decision, in parallel, without touching the working tree outside `docs/research/` and `.superpowers/research/`. Evidence only — this skill never chooses an approach. **When invoked by brainstorming, never ask the user anything** — all user interaction already happened at brainstorming's research gate. The one exception: invoked directly by the user without an explicit N, present the gate message below yourself to obtain N (the user is the invoker; no gate has happened yet). Never pick N silently. On every invocation path — whether the gate message below is shown or not — a non-zero N ends, on success, with findings cached under `docs/research/` and committed to the currently checked-out branch in this repository, unless HEAD is detached, in which case the commit is skipped and the cache stays uncommitted on disk (step 6 item 5, sub-step 5e). State this to the invoker before that commit can run. On that direct path, present this gate message verbatim — the same block brainstorming presents, copied character-exactly (`<candidates>`, `<S>`, and `<branch>` filled in — the backticks around them are placeholder markup, dropped with the angle brackets when the values are filled; the bracketed sentence appears only when the choice is difficult to reverse): > Research gate: this decision triggers prior-art research. > Candidates: `<candidates>`. > [This choice is difficult to reverse — consider a higher