Your First Deep Research

This tutorial walks through a complete deep research session — from launching a job to reading the final cited report.

Prerequisites

• Rabbit Hole running locally (pnpm dev)
• SearXNG reachable at SEARXNG_ENDPOINT
• At least one AI model configured (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY)

Step 1 — Open deep research

From the main search page, click Deep Research in the navigation, or navigate directly to /research.

Step 2 — Enter a topic

Type a research topic — something broad enough to have multiple angles:

• The tradeoffs between GraphRAG and standard RAG for enterprise knowledge management
• How Rust's ownership model compares to garbage collection for systems programming
• State of open-source LLM inference engines in 2025

Click Start Research. The pipeline starts immediately and returns a researchId.

Step 3 — Watch the pipeline

The left panel shows the activity feed in real time. Deep research runs a four-phase pipeline:

Phase 1: SCOPE

The agent decomposes your topic into 3–6 research dimensions. You'll see entries like:

Scoped topic into 5 dimensions:
  • Performance benchmarks and throughput
  • Memory and resource usage
  • Developer ergonomics and tooling
  • Ecosystem maturity
  • Production adoption patterns

Phase 2: RESEARCH (per dimension)

For each dimension, the agent searches:

1. Web — SearXNG general category, then social media/IT categories for depth
2. Wikipedia — foundational context

You'll see per-dimension progress cards as each completes.

Phase 3: EVALUATE

After all dimensions are researched, an LLM checks for coverage gaps. If gaps are found and fewer than 3 iterations have run, new sub-dimensions are researched. The activity feed shows:

Evaluating coverage... 2 gaps found.
Starting iteration 2: researching "production deployment patterns"...

Phase 4: SYNTHESIS

A streaming LLM call produces the final report with inline citations [1], [2]. The center panel shows the report as it streams in.

Step 4 — Read the report

The center panel renders the completed report:

• Table of Contents — click any heading to jump to it
• Inline citations — [1] badges link to sources
• Section headers — one per research dimension

The right panel (toggle with the Sources button) lists all sources numbered to match inline citations.

Step 5 — Download the report

Click Download (top right of the center panel) to export the report as Markdown.

What's next

• Use deep research modes — standard vs. comprehensive vs. quick
• Deep research pipeline — how SCOPE → RESEARCH → EVALUATE → SYNTHESIS works