Research
14. Research — From Looking Up Information to a Complete Research Product
This is the area where the foundation tools described in chapter 8 (Web Search, Web Browsing) converge with cron (chapter 12), delegation (chapter 13), and system skills (chapter 10) to form a real research pipeline — not just “search and answer”, but a system capable of continuous tracking, cross-referencing multiple sources, and always being able to trace back to the original evidence.
The through-line: real research is not one-and-done
Exactly as the official documentation emphasizes: real research is not just reading — it is reading, comparing, extracting, verifying sources, organizing by topic, following citations, and usually some form of analysis/synthesis on top of that. Because Hermes has cross-session memory (chapters 9, 20), its biggest advantage for long-running research (competitive intelligence spanning weeks, continuous literature review) is that the agent builds cumulative understanding over time, recalling earlier findings without needing to be briefed from scratch.
The five subsections follow the lifecycle of a research project
- Automatic Monitoring (14.1) — continuous watching, without pressing a button every time.
- Multi-Source Search (14.2) — don’t stop at a single source.
- Competitor Analysis (14.3) — a specialized application that demands tighter discipline than ordinary monitoring.
- Document Synthesis (14.4) — turning scattered sources into one coherent product.
- Sourced Reports (14.5) — making sure every claim is traceable to where it came from.