Deep research

Deep Research

Go wide, then deep: triangulate across independent sources and report what was actually found, including the gaps. The costly failure this skill prevents is the confident brief built on an echo - a dozen articles that all trace to one blog post or one press release, presented as consensus. "Not found" is a legitimate finding; a smooth answer papering over thin evidence is not.

Inputs to collect

1. The research question, restated until the user confirms it. Ambiguity here multiplies through every later step.
2. What decision or output the research feeds. A brief informing a purchase differs from one informing a publication.
3. Scope boundaries: geography, industry, population, and what is explicitly out of scope.
4. Depth and deadline. Default: 3-6 sub-questions, at least two independent sources per sub-question.
5. Known sources or prior work to build on. Treat supplied sources as leads to appraise, not settled evidence.

Label any assumed scope as an assumption.

Operating procedure

Order matters: sub-questions must exist before gathering, or the research becomes an unstructured pile shaped by whatever surfaced first.

1. Frame. Restate the question and define what a good answer looks like - the form (a number, a ranked list, a causal story) and the bar (how sure it needs to be).
2. Map. Decompose into 3-6 sub-questions and research each one, rather than the topic as a blob. If a sub-question splits again, it was two sub-questions.
3. Gather. Collect diverse, independent sources per sub-question; prefer primary sources - original data, papers, filings, direct statements - over summaries. Two sources that cite the same origin are one source. Record recency and potential bias for each as you go, not retroactively.
4. Cross-check. For each sub-question, mark where sources agree, disagree, or run thin. Disagreement is signal: hypothesize why (different definitions, populations, time periods, incentives) instead of averaging it away.
5. Synthesize. Answer the original question with the weight of evidence. Separate evidence from inference and label the inferences. Assign each finding a confidence level: High (multiple independent primary sources agree), Medium (mixed or secondary-heavy support), Low (single source or inference).
6. Audit before delivery. Re-check each citation is real and locatable, and that every High-confidence finding actually has the sourcing it claims.

Worked example (findings-table format)

Question: "Is four-day-workweek adoption growing among knowledge-work employers, and what happens to output?"

Sub-question            Finding                                   Confidence  Sources
Adoption trend          Growing from a small base; most           Medium      Coordinated-trial reports (primary);
                        employers remain on 5 days                            national labor-survey data (primary)
Output effect           Trials report maintained revenue and                  Trial-organization data (primary);
                        lower attrition - but trial firms         Medium      independent academic follow-up
                        self-selected, so effects may not
                        generalize
Who it fails for        Thin evidence for client-facing and       Low         Single practitioner survey; rest is
                        shift-based work                                      anecdote - GAP: no controlled study found

Note the third row: the honest output is a labeled gap, not a stretched conclusion.

Deliverable

Produce a research brief containing: a summary answering the question in a few sentences up top; findings organized by sub-question, each with citations and a confidence tag; a confidence-and-gaps section stating what is well-supported, what is uncertain, and what is unknown; and a source list with enough detail to locate each item plus a one-line note on its independence and bias.

Do NOT

• Do not invent or embellish a citation - one fabricated source invalidates the entire brief. Never cite something not actually consulted.
• Do not count correlated sources as corroboration; trace what each actually relies on before calling anything consensus.
• Do not average disagreeing sources into a mushy middle. Present the disagreement and the best hypothesis for why it exists.
• Do not let the gathering order set the narrative - the first three sources found are the most findable ones, not the most representative.
• Do not blur evidence and inference. A reader must be able to tell which sentences report sources and which report reasoning.

Quality bar

Before shipping: every sub-question has at least two genuinely independent sources or an explicit gap note; every finding carries a confidence tag consistent with its sourcing; disagreements are surfaced with a hypothesis, not smoothed over; the summary is answerable-from and consistent with the findings; every citation is locatable from the detail given.

Escalation

Route adjacent jobs: designing a study to collect new data is primary-research; compressing an existing corpus of sources into themes and tensions is research-synthesis; a single checkable claim is fact-checker; academic-literature-specific reviews are literature-review or systematic-review. Findings that will drive legal, medical, or financial decisions need professional review before action.