Multi-source recency research skill. Takes the pulse of any topic across Reddit, Hacker News, the open web, and (optionally) X/Twitter within a configurable recent window — synthesizing what people are saying right now into a single coherent briefing.

This is the research-pack shape anchor — its Agent Integrity Rules block transfers to litreview, grants, syllabus, patent, dossier, notebooklm, and research (the orchestrator).

What it does

Grill-me intake — 2–4 forcing questions, one at a time: topic specificity, angle (trend/sentiment/problems/opportunities/comparison), time window (7d/14d/30d/60d/90d), platform scope.
Parallel Phases 1–3 — Reddit + Hacker News + open web fire concurrently. 1 q/sec rate limit per platform; sequential calls within each platform.
Optional Phase 4 — X/Twitter via Grok / X API / browser automation if available. Skipped with note otherwise.
Synthesis — cross-platform pattern detection: consensus, controversy, pain points, excitement, emerging trends, gaps.
Output — markdown file at ${RESEARCH_DIR}/pulse/<topic-slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md AND full briefing in chat.

The skill is recency-oriented — it captures the current conversation, not the canonical reference.

Research-pack conventions (preserved verbatim per PR #657 audit)

Execution discipline: Phases 1–3 run in parallel; sequential calls within each phase; 1 q/sec rate limit per platform.
Source discipline: Cite only sources returned by this session's tool calls. Training knowledge labeled [Background — not from search] and excluded from primary findings count.
Three-count tracking: Queries sent / sources received / sources cited. Surfaced in the audit log inline in the synthesis section.
Retry policy: On failure → wait 3s → retry once → log. After 3 consecutive failures across all sources: stop, alert user, share what was collected.

Source spec

megaprompts/01-pulse-megaprompt.md (PR #657). The megaprompt is canonical; this plugin is the working implementation. Drift between the two is a bug — re-grill with /cs:grill-with-docs if they diverge.

Plugin layout

File	Role
`skills/pulse/SKILL.md`	The skill itself (Claude reads this when triggered)
`skills/pulse/scripts/time_window_calculator.py`	Deterministic Unix-timestamp + Reddit `t=` parameter computation from window string
`skills/pulse/scripts/citation_tracker.py`	JSON-backed three-count audit log (sent / received / cited)
`skills/pulse/scripts/topic_slug_generator.py`	Filesystem-safe slug + duplicate-date detection for output paths
`skills/pulse/references/research_pack_conventions.md`	The Agent Integrity Rules canon (7+ sources)
`skills/pulse/references/cross_platform_synthesis.md`	Consensus/controversy/pain detection across platforms (7+ sources)
`skills/pulse/references/parallel_execution_discipline.md`	1 q/sec rationale + plan-tier signals (7+ sources)
`agents/cs-pulse.md`	Pulse persona (forcing intake, three-count enforcer, graceful degradation)
`commands/cs-pulse.md`	`/cs:pulse <topic>` slash command for explicit invocation

Quick start

# Compute timestamps for a 30-day window
python skills/pulse/scripts/time_window_calculator.py --window 30d

# Start a citation tracker session
python skills/pulse/scripts/citation_tracker.py --action start --session pulse-2026-05-15-claude-code

# Generate the output-file slug for a topic
python skills/pulse/scripts/topic_slug_generator.py --topic "self-hosted LLM deployment" --date 2026-05-15

License

MIT.