Summary  
This chapter covers how to implement a modular, reusable workflow for automating research tasks—defining questions, validating and organizing information sources, and generating structured summaries.  

General domain of usage  
Research

This lab assumes basic familiarity with modern AI tools and prompting techniques. If you'd like to improve the quality, consistency, and reliability of your AI workflows, we recommend starting with our Practical AI for Work.

### What Makes a Good Research System?

AI can find information quickly, but collecting links is not the same as doing good research. A reliable research system gives AI a clear process for finding, checking, organising, and using information. A good research system should help you answer five questions:

* What are we trying to learn?
* Where did each piece of information come from?
* Is the source reliable?
* How does it compare with other sources?
* What conclusions can we reasonably make?

In this AI Lab, you will build a complete research system in Claude Code. You will create a structured workspace, define research questions, evaluate sources, organise evidence, generate a research brief, and turn the process into a reusable workflow.

The workspace you build in this AI Lab can be reused for future research topics, making each new project faster and more consistent.

Note

What is the main purpose of a research system?

Build a complete AI-powered research system using Claude Code. You will learn how to turn a broad topic into focused research questions, create a structured plan, find and evaluate reliable sources, and organise evidence in a reusable workspace. Through practical AI Lab chapters, you will create source libraries, compare conflicting information, store findings in a research database, and produce clear research briefs with accurate citations. By the end of the course, you will have a repeatable Claude Code workflow that can be used for future research projects.

Learn what makes a research system reliable and how to prepare a structured workspace before collecting information. You will define research questions, set the scope of the project, and create a clear research plan for Claude to follow.

Learn how to find relevant information and judge whether a source is trustworthy. You will remove weak, outdated, and duplicate sources before organising the strongest results into a structured source library.

Turn collected sources into clear and usable evidence. You will extract key findings, compare sources that disagree, and build a research database that keeps claims, evidence, and source details connected.

Use the collected evidence to develop supported conclusions and create a concise research brief. You will review claims and citations for accuracy before turning the complete process into a reusable Claude Code workflow.