Quick Start

Find sources and prepare summaries with traceable citations

Research Framework Quickstart

Prompt-first procedure: Describe the outcome you want in your agent conversation. The agent should select and load the appropriate AIWG assets, explain material changes, request any needed approval, and report verification evidence. Exact commands and flags appear only in the CLI reference.

First time using AIWG? Begin with [Install, Connect, and

Verify](../../getting-started/install-connect-verify.md). This guide assumes AIWG is already installed and connected to the target project.

Use the research framework when you want an AI assistant to keep sources, summaries, claims, and gaps tied to reviewable research artifacts.

Installation

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Installation
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

the agent-owned use operation refreshes shared project context and prints any provider reload step needed before the assistant sees the framework. After installation, research artifacts are written under `.aiwg/research/`.

First Literature Review

Start with a prompt that asks for a concrete research artifact:

Use AIWG's research framework to scope a literature review on LLM agent safety.
Produce a search strategy, inclusion criteria, a first result set, and the
gaps or risks I should review before acquisition.

Success means the agent returns or saves a search strategy with source selection criteria, cites the result files it created, and identifies the next review decision.

Step 1: Discover Papers

Search using natural language:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Search using natural language
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

Output files:

  • `.aiwg/research/discovery/search-results-{timestamp}.json` — All results with relevance scores
  • `.aiwg/research/discovery/search-strategy.md` — Search strategy documentation (for PRISMA compliance)
  • `.aiwg/research/discovery/gap-report-{timestamp}.md` — Under-researched topics detected
  • `.aiwg/research/discovery/acquisition-queue.json` — Papers ready for download

The discovery agent ranks results by: relevance (40%), citation count (30%), venue quality (20%), recency (10%).

To include citation network traversal (papers citing your results and papers they cite):

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: To include citation network traversal (papers citing your results and papers they cite)
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

Step 2: Acquire Papers

Download papers from the acquisition queue:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Download papers from the acquisition queue
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

This downloads available PDFs, assigns REF-XXX identifiers, records metadata, and stores SHA-256 checksums. Paywalled or unavailable papers should be flagged for review rather than skipped silently.

For a paywalled paper you have locally:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: For a paywalled paper you have locally
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

For a single paper by its ID:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: For a single paper by its ID
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

If some downloads failed:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: If some downloads failed
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

Step 3: Summarize Papers

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Step 3: Summarize Papers
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

For each acquired PDF, the documentation agent: 1. Extracts text (with OCR for scanned papers if needed) 2. Produces a 1-sentence, 1-paragraph, and 1-page summary 3. Extracts structured data: claims, methods, datasets, key findings 4. Flags claims that need source review 5. Creates a Zettelkasten-style literature note

Output for each paper:

  • `.aiwg/research/knowledge/summaries/REF-XXX-summary.md`
  • `.aiwg/research/knowledge/extractions/REF-XXX-extraction.json`
  • `.aiwg/research/knowledge/notes/REF-XXX-literature-note.md`

For a single paper:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: For a single paper
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

Step 4: Review the Gap Analysis

cat .aiwg/research/discovery/gap-report-latest.md

The gap report identifies topic clusters with few papers — potential research opportunities or areas where your search terms need refinement.

Complete Workflow: 4 Commands

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Complete Workflow: 4 Commands
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

Use the resulting files as a review queue. Acquisition coverage and summary quality depend on source access, paper format, and configured review gates.

Citation Management

Format a citation for a specific paper:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Format a citation for a specific paper
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

The citation agent supports common citation styles. For systematic reviews, it can also build citation networks showing which papers cite each other.

Quality Assessment

Assess a paper's evidence quality:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Assess a paper's evidence quality
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

Produces a GRADE assessment (High/Moderate/Low/Very Low) with justification. Useful for systematic reviews where you need to rate the body of evidence.

Configuration

The framework reads agent config from `.aiwg/research/config/`. Key settings:

Adjust search ranking in `discovery-agent.yaml`:

discovery_agent:
  ranking:
    relevance_weight: 0.40   # Natural language similarity
    citation_weight: 0.30    # Citation count (popularity proxy)
    venue_weight: 0.20       # Journal/conference quality
    recency_weight: 0.10     # How recent the paper is

Set download concurrency in `research-acquisition-agent.yaml`:

acquisition_agent:
  download:
    concurrent_downloads: 5
    timeout_seconds: 60

Configure summarization strictness in `documentation-agent.yaml`:

documentation_agent:
  hallucination:
    enabled: true
    confidence_threshold: 0.9    # Claims below this are flagged for review
    user_review_required: true   # Pause on flagged claims

Troubleshooting

Empty search results: Check API connectivity with the agent-owned research operation. Consider reformulating your query — semantic search works best with natural language rather than keyword combinations.

Rate limit errors: Set a Semantic Scholar API key for higher limits:

export SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY="your-api-key"

The framework automatically falls back to arXiv and CrossRef when the primary API is unavailable.

Hallucination detected: Review the flagged content in `.aiwg/research/knowledge/logs/REF-XXX-hallucination-detected.log`. Re-run with the strict-validation option to regenerate with tighter checks.

Scanned PDFs with poor text extraction: Add the ocr option flag:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: Scanned PDFs with poor text extraction: Add the ocr option flag
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

References

  • `@$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/research-complete/docs/overview.md` — Framework overview
  • `@$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/research-complete/agents/` — Agent definitions