Actor Profiling

Build a comprehensive model of the user as a research actor — who they are, what they have, what constrains them, and why they're doing this.

Available SOPs

Methodology Guidance

The goal is to construct an ActorProfile with enough information to inform field exploration and goal decomposition. How you get there is your decision.

Typical flow:

1. explore-resume first (one-time, never re-run)
2. clarify-resources → ask-constraints → ask-intentionality

But you may:

• Return to ask-intentionality at any point when you discover a deeper WHY to probe
• Interleave clarify-resources when intentionality probing reveals resource-related gaps
• Skip or abbreviate SOPs when the user's initial message already provides the information

End condition: You judge that you have enough information to construct a meaningful ActorProfile. In cold-start scenarios, "enough" may mean just establishing boundaries (what the user won't do) rather than specifics.

Cold-Start Special Case

When the user doesn't know what they want or can do, the ActorProfile captures boundaries rather than commitments:

• "User has experience in NLP and GNN, won't jump to physics/chemistry"
• "Timeline is flexible, no hard deadline"
• "Motivated by interest, not graduation pressure"

This is sufficient — later tactics will help narrow within these boundaries.

Output (Tactic-Level Aggregation)

After running the SOPs you deem necessary, synthesize an ActorProfile:

ActorProfile {
  background: { skills, projects, publications, researchExp }
  resources: { compute, timeline, collaboration, data, environment }
  constraints: { venue, methodology, avoidance, advisor }
  intentionality: {
    motivation, successDefinition,
    riskTolerance, innovationPreference,
    independencePreference, timeUrgency, learningWillingness
  }
  boundary: "..."  // what the user definitely won't do
}

This is a conceptual schema, not a JSON requirement. Express it in whatever format serves the downstream context best.