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Step Guide: Research Agent

Knowledge

An AI agent that searches the web and writes briefs with sources

Overview

The Research Agent step searches the web and synthesizes findings using AI. It supports two actions: Search produces a narrative summary with citations, and Structured Search populates user-defined fields from the research results.

Search

Search the web and produce a markdown summary with cited sources. Write a research goal as a prompt, and the agent issues multiple web searches, reads the results, and synthesizes a brief.

  • Build account briefs for prospects by researching their company, recent news, and key people
  • Gather competitive intelligence from public sources
  • Monitor industry trends by searching recent sources within a time window

Configure a provider, model, and search depth (Quick runs up to 2 searches, Standard up to 5, Deep up to 10). Write a prompt with references to data from previous steps. Advanced options let you restrict or exclude specific domains and filter by recency. Output fields are pre-configured: a summary in markdown, a list of cited sources (with title, URL, snippet, and published date), the number of sources, and the number of searches.

Tips
  • Use Standard search depth for most use cases. Quick is faster but less thorough, Deep covers more ground but uses more credits.
  • Use site restrictions to focus on trusted sources (e.g., linkedin.com, crunchbase.com)
  • Be specific in your research goal. "Find the CEO and employee count for {{step.company}}" works better than "Research this company"
  • Use the recency filter to limit results to recent sources when freshness matters

Structured Search

Search the web and populate user-defined structured fields. Define custom output fields like employee_count, headquarters, or recent_funding, and the agent fills them from its research instead of writing a narrative summary.

  • Research a topic and extract specific data points (e.g., company size, industry, funding)
  • Enrich lead records with structured company data at scale
  • Extract comparable data points across multiple companies for analysis

Same search settings as the Search action (provider, model, depth, domain filters, recency). Define your output fields to specify what data you want extracted. Citation data (sources, number of sources, and number of searches) is included automatically alongside your custom fields.

Tips
  • Name output fields clearly so the agent knows what to look for
  • Combine with For Each to research a list of companies from a spreadsheet

Frequently Asked Questions

How does search depth work?
Quick runs up to 2 web searches, Standard up to 5, and Deep up to 10. Deeper searches are more thorough but slower and use more credits.
Can I restrict which websites are searched?
Yes. Use the allowed domains setting to limit searches to specific sites, or the exclude domains setting to skip certain sites.