deep-research

Deep Research

Conduct systematic multi-source research with traceable citations and structured synthesis. Produces a verifiable research brief, not a hallucinated summary.

When to Use

• A technology decision needs evidence-backed comparison
• You need to synthesize competing viewpoints from multiple sources
• A topic requires both primary sources and derivative context
• The answer is too uncertain or consequential for a quick answer

When NOT to Use

Instead of deep-research	Use
Quick factual lookup	answer directly
Internal codebase investigation	evaluate-repository or direct search
Implementation planning	Plan Mode
Conversational brainstorming	conversation directly

Tooling

Native (always available):

• web_fetch — fetch a URL and read its content

Optional local tools (if installed):

• Search CLI or repo-specific web search helpers — use them as the preferred discovery layer when they are already available in your environment, then fetch the final URLs with web_fetch for evidence capture and citations
• defuddle — extract clean markdown from cluttered public web pages before summarizing or filing evidence

Optional via MCP (if configured):

• Firecrawl — crawl entire sites, extract clean text at scale
• Exa — semantic web search with real results

If you only have web_fetch, use targeted URL fetches. Prefer primary sources (papers, official docs, specification pages) over aggregators.

If defuddle is installed and the page is a clutter-heavy HTML article or docs site, normalize it first:

defuddle parse <url> --md

Do not use this for URLs that already end in .md, authenticated pages, or JSON/API endpoints.

See mcp-configs/ for MCP server configuration if you want Firecrawl or Exa.

Workflow

1. Define the research question

Be precise. Vague questions produce vague briefs.

Research question: [clear, specific question]
Scope: [what to include / exclude]
Output goal: [decision support / comparison / summary / literature review]