Research standards and expert sources

Research what web standards and expert sources say about a component or pattern, especially where design systems are silent or disagree, and return source-linked evidence as the standards and expert section of an MDS research file.

Answer the Decision topics that official design-system documentation does not settle: structural and accessibility requirements from standards, and practical tiebreakers from expert research. Produce the ## Standards and expert research section of research.md.

The researcher workflow owns the shared parts of research.md, the Decision topics, and assembly. This skill owns its own section only.

Output

Return the section below to the researcher workflow. When run directly, follow the workflow’s file format and merge rules: create the shared parts if research.md is missing; otherwise edit the ## Standards and expert research section in place only. For an extend or re-verify, research only the topic or sources the brief names, and return only new or changed rows and any contradiction (both claims, sources, dates). Do not create other files.

When to run

Read references/sources.md only when a trigger applies.

Source type	Trigger
Standards (APG)	The component has an APG pattern.
Standards (WCAG, WAI-ARIA)	A Decision topic needs a normative requirement.
Expert (NN/g)	A Decision topic is a choice or boundary question (when to use this rather than another component, or where one ends and another begins), or the design-system research is silent or contradictory on a topic.

When no trigger applies, the researcher workflow records Not run: <reason> in the section. When run directly, the user’s request is the trigger.

Use only registered sources. Do not discover sources by web search, and do not cite aggregators or third-party summaries. Determine availability from the current run.

Procedure

Receive the subject, Decision topics, the triggers that applied, and a summary of where the design-system research was silent or contradictory.
For each trigger, check the registered source. Record the actual outcome: useful evidence found; checked with nothing relevant found; or inaccessible during this run.
Return the section.

Evidence rules

Link every finding to the page that supports it, and name the source at the point of each finding.
NEVER describe an inaccessible source as checked or absent.
NEVER fill an evidence gap with general knowledge or a plausible value.
Treat Standards findings as the baseline for structure and accessibility behaviour.
Treat Expert findings as advisory tiebreakers. Never present them as MDS policy.
Record a disagreement between a standard and a design system as a contradiction. Do not choose a side.
Mark user-supplied evidence as Manually supplied and retain its source link or attachment name.
The writer must verify product and API decisions against MDS sources before using any finding.

Section format

Omit the ### Standards or ### Expert subsection when its trigger did not apply, and say so in one line (Expert: not checked — <reason>). Keep cells concise.

References