AI Research Assistant

Offer structured research to businesses that need decisions supported by evidence: market overviews, competitor comparisons, industry summaries, supplier or partner shortlists, pricing landscapes and customer-language analysis. Everything is built from public, lawfully accessible sources, with each finding recorded against its source, date and confidence level. AI helps organise, summarise and structure material you have gathered; it never supplies facts of its own, and any gap is reported as a gap rather than filled with a guess.

• A clearly defined customer, problem, and deliverable.
• A sample or portfolio item that demonstrates the exact service offered.
• A written scope covering price, delivery, revisions, and responsibilities.
• At least one real market conversation or structured user-feedback session.
• A repeatable delivery process that another person could understand.

Milestone status is estimated from your delivery-checklist progress. Complete the checklist below to advance the tracker.

1. 1
   Step 1

   Define three research products you can deliver reliably, such as a competitor comparison, a market overview and a pricing landscape, each with a fixed structure and page range.

2. 2
   Step 2

   Choose a sector you can navigate quickly and learn where its credible public information lives: regulators, trade bodies, official statistics, company filings, annual reports and reputable trade press.

3. 3
   Step 3

   Write your evidence standard: what counts as a primary source, what counts as secondary, what is excluded, and how old a source may be before it must be re-checked.

4. 4
   Step 4

   Build a source-log template capturing claim, source name, direct link, publication date, access date, source type and confidence rating.

5. 5
   Step 5

   Adopt an uncertainty scale, for example Confirmed, Probable, Indicative and Unknown, and define exactly what each level requires before it may be used.

6. 6
   Step 6

   Set your access rules: use only lawfully accessible public information; do not bypass paywalls, logins, rate limits, platform terms or restricted databases; and do not gather personal data beyond legitimate business contact details.

7. 7
   Step 7

   Create the report skeleton: brief, method and sources, key findings, detailed sections, contradictory evidence, gaps and limitations, and recommended next steps.

8. 8
   Step 8

   Design a client brief form that pins down the decision being made, the questions to answer, the geography, the timeframe and the deadline.

9. 9
   Step 9

   Run one small paid pilot such as a five-competitor comparison, then time each stage to price future work accurately.

10. 10
    Step 10

    Deliver each project with the report, the full source log, and a short verbal or written walkthrough of the findings and their limitations.

11. 11
    Step 11

    Store project files and sources so a client can return months later and see exactly where a figure came from.

12. 12
    Step 12

    Review your method after each project and remove any step that did not improve the quality of the decision.