Research Briefs & Updates

When you create a new analysis in Hinsley, the platform immediately begins researching your topic. This initial research runs automatically in the background, discovering relevant sources, processing their content, and producing a research brief that summarizes the current landscape. After the initial brief, you can run research updates at any time to find new information.

Initial Research

As soon as you create an analysis, Hinsley starts an automated research workflow:

  1. Source discovery - Hinsley searches the web and news sources for content related to your analysis topic, creating document records for each relevant result.
  2. Monitoring source checks - If you have configured any saved searches, those are also checked for relevant results.
  3. Content processing - Hinsley fetches the full content of discovered documents and assesses their relevance to your topic.
  4. Brief generation - Once the research is complete, Hinsley generates a research brief - an AI-written summary of the key findings.

While the initial research is running, a progress timeline is displayed showing the current step. The analysis chat is available once the research completes. If you navigate away during the research, Hinsley sends you an email notification when it finishes.

Research Briefs

A research brief is a structured summary of Hinsley’s research on your analysis topic. Each brief includes:

  • The Bottom Line - A concise one-to-three-sentence assessment of the topic
  • Body - A detailed narrative summarizing the key findings, organized thematically
  • Citations - References to the source documents that informed the brief

The initial research brief becomes the “current” brief for the analysis and serves as the starting point for all subsequent analytical work.

Research Updates

After the initial research, you can check for new information at any time by clicking “Check for New Results” in the Research Updates section. This triggers a new research workflow that:

  • Searches for documents published since the last research run
  • Checks all saved searches for new results
  • Processes and assesses new content
  • Generates an update summary focused specifically on what is new

Update summaries differ from the initial brief: rather than covering the full topic, they highlight new developments and how they relate to your existing research. Each update summary is linked to the specific research workflow that produced it.

Research updates can be run at most once per hour to avoid duplicate processing.

Viewing Research

The Research Updates tab lists all research workflows - the initial research and any subsequent updates - in reverse chronological order. Each entry shows:

  • The generated summary (brief or update) with The Bottom Line and body content
  • A table of reviewed results with links to the source documents
  • Export buttons for downloading the summary as PDF or DOCX
  • A status indicator showing whether the workflow is running or completed

A research log is also available, providing a detailed timeline of all research events: when monitoring sources were created, when fetches were run, and when workflows started and completed.

Search Results

Documents discovered by research workflows and saved searches appear in the Search Results tab. Results are organized into “Recent,” “Stale,” and “Archived” categories, and you can filter them by:

  • Source - Which monitoring source or search found the document
  • Publication date - Past day, week, month, quarter, or year
  • Domain - The website the document came from
  • Relevance level - High, Medium, or Low, as assessed by Hinsley

From the search results, you can promote any result to source material by clicking the save icon, giving it higher priority in AI-generated content across the analysis.