Creating an Analysis

An analysis is the central workspace in Hinsley. Every piece of research, every decomposition, every scenario, and every forecasting workflow lives inside an analysis. Creating one takes a single step, but the topic you choose shapes everything that follows - the research Hinsley gathers, the context the AI assistant works from, and the framing of every downstream output.

Starting a New Analysis

From the Hinsley home page, you will see a prompt asking for your analysis topic. Enter a clear, focused statement of what you want to analyze and click “Create your analysis.”

The topic can be up to 1,000 characters, but shorter is usually better. It serves as the research question that drives all automated work on the analysis, so treat it as the brief you would give a new team member. For guidance on writing a topic that produces useful results, see Start With the Right Question.

If you are not sure where to start, the home page also offers an “Example Research Questions” link that opens a gallery of sample topics you can use as a starting point.

What Happens Next

As soon as you submit the topic, Hinsley does several things in sequence:

  1. Creates the analysis and redirects you to its home page.
  2. Starts an initial research workflow that searches the web and news sources for relevant content, fetches and assesses each result, and generates a research brief.
  3. Opens an analysis chat conversation dedicated to this analysis. The chat becomes available for messaging once the initial research completes.

A progress timeline on the analysis page shows the current research step. If you navigate away while research is running, Hinsley sends you an email when it finishes.

Account Limits

Every Hinsley plan sets two per-user limits that affect analysis creation:

  • Analyses created per month - How many new analyses each user can create in a rolling month.
  • Active analyses per user - How many of a user’s analyses can be active at once. Deactivating an older analysis frees a slot.

If you hit either limit, the create form is replaced with a notice explaining which limit was reached and how to upgrade your plan. Your existing analyses remain fully accessible.

After Creation

Once the initial research completes, a typical next step is to explore the research brief, then either begin the analysis chat to develop your thinking, build a decomposition of the topic, or create scenarios and forecasting questions. You can also invite collaborators at any time.