docs(research): four-wave competitive gap research, product registry and compensation backlog

.gitignore

@@ -31,3 +31,7 @@
 .z-proflow/
 .z-flashflow/
 .zcode/
+research-repos/
+research-issues/
+research-repos-prep.log
+research-manifest.json

docs/research/README.md

@@ -17,6 +17,39 @@ extension points for native providers and additional endpoint families.
   request shaping, response repair, and stable OpenCode configuration.
 - [Extended endpoints](endpoints.md) — embeddings, rerank, realtime, audio,
   images, video, files, OCR, batch, vector stores, and search.
+- [Competitive gap analysis](competitive-gap-analysis.md) — October 2026
+  capability comparison against 40+ LLM gateways and routing products across
+  two research waves, with prioritized gaps and near-term candidates.
+- [Competitive landscape compendium](competitive-landscape-compendium.md) —
+  consolidated record of the three-wave competitive research: market map,
+  capability areas, complete gap register (cross-referencing the wave-3
+  candidate gaps), implementation blueprints, and a coverage appendix for
+  all 90 research items.
+- [Niche repository survey](niche-repos.md) — third-wave (November 2026)
+  deep dives into 23 niche repositories — routers, caches, queue
+  dispatchers, DLP proxies, subscription adapters — each mapped to the gap
+  register, with a coverage appendix of all 121 deduplicated finds.
+- [Product registry](repos-registry.json) — machine-readable registry of
+  the products researched in depth across the three October waves (72
+  products, 859 capability rows), each capability with its evidence URL and
+  gap-register mapping. Theme, sweep, and frontier findings are folded into
+  the products they cover, and the 98 uninstantiated wave-3 finds stay in
+  the niche survey's appendix — hence 72 product rows against 90 inventory
+  items. The November wave 4 is recorded separately (below) and is
+  deliberately not folded in: its machine-readable output is the
+  compensation backlog, whose rows are crate-mapped candidates rather than
+  capability rows.
+- [Repository intelligence](repo-intelligence.md) — fourth-wave (November
+  2026) harvest of 63 repositories: 23 full four-angle records (code,
+  issues, pulls, gaps) and 40 issue-tracker sweeps, each with evidence,
+  plus a pain-point index, a direction index, recurring unmet needs
+  observed in three or more repositories, and the stated rule mapping
+  record findings to backlog candidates.
+- [Compensation backlog](compensation-backlog.json) — machine-readable,
+  priority-sorted backlog of 38 features and fixes implied by the
+  fourth-wave intelligence (12 high, 19 medium, 7 low), every candidate
+  backed by evidence carried in the repository-intelligence record and
+  assigned to the workspace crate where it would land.
 
 The normative protocol direction remains in
 [`protocol.md`](../protocol.md). This directory records edge cases that should