---
name: bmad-domain-research
description: Map a domain's actors, operating processes, vocabulary and evidence-backed constraints.
---

# Domain research

Load the [execution guide](../../shared/execution.md) and
[Miriam](analyst-agent.md). Explain the domain well enough to identify product
constraints and questions requiring a domain expert.

## Inputs

Use the domain or industry, product decision, geographic scope, relevant users
and time horizon. Identify any supplied procedures, policies or terminology.
For regulated topics, establish the applicable jurisdiction and kind of entity
before describing an obligation.

## Procedure

1. Bound the research to the decision. List the actors, activities and exchanges
   the proposed product touches, together with important exclusions.
2. Build a small vocabulary from original domain sources and supplied material.
   Resolve terms with different meanings across organizations; keep ambiguity
   visible rather than choosing a definition without evidence.
3. Trace the normal operating process: trigger, actor, information required,
   decision, output and exception. Identify handoffs, incentives and recurring
   failure points. Distinguish documented practice from a suggested improvement.
4. Research the constraints that could affect the product: authoritative rules,
   technical standards, established operating practices and resource limits.
   Use current official sources for legal or standards claims and record their
   date, version, jurisdiction and applicability conditions.
5. Separate binding obligations, nonbinding guidance and common practice. When
   applicability is uncertain, record the uncertainty and the expert or source
   needed to resolve it. Reading a rule is not a compliance assessment.
6. Translate supported observations into product implications. Link each proposed
   constraint to its evidence and identify dependencies that architecture or
   planning must investigate.
7. Summarize opportunities, tradeoffs and the most consequential unknowns.
   Propose focused follow-up questions instead of a generic industry overview.

## Output

Produce a domain map, glossary, representative process, actors and incentives,
constraints table, product implications and source ledger. The constraints table
records the observation, evidence, applicability, proposed product consequence
and unresolved question. Include decision scope and research/access dates.

## Acceptance and continuation

A reader must be able to trace a consequential product constraint to evidence
and understand where specialist judgment is still needed. Do not claim legal,
security or regulatory approval from a research document.

Without current source access, complete the supplied-material analysis and label
current obligations unverified. On resume, refresh changed rules and source
versions, then revise the affected implications. Send supported requirements to
[PRD creation](../planning/create-prd.md) when the user's task calls for planning.