Deep Research · Lesson 1Free ~12 min · No code

Beyond a quick search — answers you can actually trust.

A quick lookup answers a fact; deep research answers a decision. AI can do in an hour what used to take a day of digging — but only if you frame the question well and check the answer. This lesson covers when to go deep, the brief that gets a usable result, and how to read it critically.

The mental model

Deep research isn't one search — it's gathering across sources and synthesizing into a brief you can act on.

A quick lookup answers "what's the capital of X." Deep research answers "should we expand into this market." It pulls from many sources, weighs them, and produces a synthesis with its reasoning shown. AI is superb at the gathering and drafting — your job is to define the question and judge the result.

The reframeYou're the editor-in-chief, not the reader. AI is your research assistant: fast, tireless, and occasionally confidently wrong. The value is in how you frame the question and how critically you check the answer.

Step 01 · Go deep, or just search?

Deep research is for questions where being wrong costs you — decisions, comparisons, unfamiliar ground. Tap each question: worth deep research, or just a quick lookup?

Step 02 · Write the research brief

A good answer starts with a well-scoped question. Pick the pieces — your brief prompt assembles below:

Question what you're researching

Decision what you'll do with it

Angles what to cover

Brief:

0 / 3

Your research-brief promptPick options above…

Notice it asks for sources on every claim, where sources disagree, and what's still uncertain — that honesty is what makes a brief safe to act on. Use a research-grade tool (Perplexity, or deep-research modes in ChatGPT and Claude) that searches the live web and shows citations — not a plain chat answering from memory.

Step 03 · Read it critically

The brief looks authoritative. Before you act, open the citations behind the most important claims:

The brief says: "Market A grew 18% last year [source 3]." You're about to bet a quarter on it.

Source 3 is from 2019 — the 18% was that year, not "last year." Acting on it would have been a costly mistake. A source you didn't open is a claim you can't trust.

AI invents plausible-looking sources and cites real ones for things they don't say — and serves stale data as current. Never act on a brief without spot-checking the citations behind its most important claims.

Your challenge: produce one real brief

Confirm it's worth deep research, not a quick lookup.
Write a scoped research-brief prompt tied to your decision.
Run it in a research-grade, citation-showing tool.
Open the citations behind the top claims and verify them.

✓

Lesson complete

You can tell deep research from a quick lookup, decide when the stakes justify it, write a scoped brief tied to a decision, use citation-showing tools, and read AI research critically.

Up next

Lesson 2 · Competitor & market reports

Continue to Lesson 2 →

Open the Playground Back to Deep Research