/autonomous-investigation

Autonomous Investigation Protocol — In Action (Industrial)

All companies, products, URLs, and figures are fictional. Industrial sibling of protocol-in-action.md. The SaaS run showed the gate revision and the gaps list; this one shows two clauses the SaaS run couldn't stress as hard: confidence stacking across physical-world channels (customs, registries, permits) and the conflict case — when two disciplines disagree and the protocol says dig instead of average.

1. Invocation, budget, and one surgical question

User: Investigate whether Meridian Freight Systems is entering plant-floor automation — this supports how much of Northfield's 2027 roadmap we fence off for a defensive play.

Target and decision arrived inline. The skill spends one question:

Agent: One question: does "entering" mean shipping a product, or building the capability? The evidence bars differ — capability shows up in filings and hiring years before a product shows up in a catalog.

User: Capability. If it's real, 2027 planning has to know.

2. The search-plan gate

Agent: Search plan (say "revise" to change it):

• Sweep certification registries, customs/trade data, and facility/permit records for commitment-side signals (money and atoms, not words)
• Cross-check with hiring patterns, API/docs changes, and their public solutions pages
• Facts get URLs and dates; interpretations get labeled Inference; unknowables go to the gaps list, not the estimate mill

Continue unless revised — the user lets it run.

3. Findings — a stack, and a conflict

Key findings:

• Certification filing "in process" for a plant-floor equipment class, via a Meridian subsidiary — Fact (registry entry, Oct 2026)
• Component import volumes rising two consecutive quarters — Fact (trade records)
• "Manufacturing early access" signup on their solutions page — Fact (page diff, Nov 2026)
• API docs already model generic asset classes — Fact (docs)

The stack (4 channels agree): registry (MASINT-adjacent) + customs (MASINT) + web staging (SIGINT) + architecture (TECHINT) → capability build is real — actionable intelligence, not a watch item.

The conflict: HUMINT disagrees. Their careers page shows no manufacturing-domain hires — no controls engineers, no plant-floor sales, no channel roles — Fact (job boards, checked Nov 2026). Four channels say "building"; the people channel says "not staffing it." Per the protocol: channels in conflict means someone is bluffing — dig, don't average.

The dig (one more pass, scoped to the conflict): the certification filing lists a partner engineering firm as the responsible party — Fact (registry detail page). Resolution hypothesis: they're building through partners, not headcount — which changes the defensive read entirely: a partner-led entry can be slowed by winning the partners — Inference, confidence: medium.

Gaps (couldn't find, not guessed):

• No way to see the partner agreement's exclusivity terms from public record
• Import volumes can't be allocated between warehouse (their core) and plant-floor (the bet)

Reading for your decision: capability build confirmed, product 12-36 months out (certification clock), and the entry vector is partner-led. Fence off a partner-program response in 2027, not a product-defense sprint — Inference.

Final Step — reply 1, 2, 3, 4, a combination, or "Verbose Mode":

1. Map their likely partner-firm candidates (the integrator roll-ups first)
2. Set tripwires: registry progress, distributor listings, domain hiring
3. Trace the partner-led scenario into 2027 roadmap assumptions
4. Brief leadership with the stack + conflict resolution as-is

Why this example works

• The conflict case is the star. Four agreeing channels would have shipped a tidy "they're coming" brief; the disagreeing fifth channel forced a dig that changed the strategic response (win the partners vs. race the product). Averaging the signals — "80% confident" — would have buried the most decision-relevant fact in the whole run.
• Commitment-side evidence led the plan. Registries, customs, permits — money and atoms. The announcement layer (their marketing site) appears only as staging corroboration, exactly the "ambition is OSINT; commitment shows up elsewhere" corollary.
• The gaps list stayed honest under pressure — import allocation and partner terms are unknowable from outside, and the report says so instead of estimating, even though both numbers would have made the brief more satisfying.
• Read the two siblings together: SaaS run = gate revision + graceful unattended rerun; industrial run = stacking + conflict resolution. Between them, all seven clauses appear under load in two different physics.