feat(claude): the search-first rule applies to agents too, not just to you

[thompsonson]

The Questions section already says "Read the documentation, code, config and git history before asking". I applied it to questions put to Matt and not to questions put to another agent.

What that cost

I asked the dev-tools session three questions for the broker UAT case list. Then, told to search properly, I did:

Question	Already answered?	Where
The literal devtool argv forms, and which cross the wire	Yes	docs/design/devtool-vcs.md — "devtool git commit and devtool git push route to different crates; routing lives in the multiplexer"; README.md; and broker.md's three-call table naming which step is -network and which -local
How an Unknown becomes determinate	Yes, verbatim	docs/design/broker.md: "Status — back: the last Decision the ledger recorded against that nonce. This is how an Unknown closes without a human [measured, dev#522]", plus why push echoes the nonce
What a caller sees on refusal	Asked in the wrong terms	docs/problem/state-space.md argues a structured result, calling exit-code-plus-prose the common convention and Bad. I asked about exit codes; the design's answer is the Decision

Two I should not have asked. The third inverted itself once I read the note.

Why it matters more between agents, not less

Asking Matt something the docs answer wastes his time, and he notices. Asking a peer agent wastes a session's time and produces a confident answer anyway, so nothing corrects it — the waste is invisible and it reads like collaboration.

The rule

- This applies to every question, including ones you put to another agent.
- Search the documentation exhaustively before asking, and again before answering.
- Name the files you searched, so the gap is visible when there is one.

The last line is the cheap one. A question that says where it looked is one you can correct in a sentence; one that does not is one you have to re-derive from scratch.

./tests/test.sh quick passes.

https://claude.ai/code/session_01VUd2Wv3nkSBpWgYBK6yhfh