Build a Source-Traceable AI Research Workflow
Goal
Produce a research summary in which every important conclusion can be traced to an original source.
Prerequisites
Prepare a focused question and define its time, geography, and source-type boundaries.
Steps
- Split the question into definitions, current state, evidence, and limitations.
- Collect candidate papers with academic search tools and add official institutional or product sources.
- Build an evidence table with title, date, source type, key finding, and original location.
- Add selected sources to a source-grounded notebook and ask it to draft only from those materials.
- Open the originals to verify every number, date, and condition, marking conflicting evidence.
- Separate established facts, source opinions, and your own inferences in the conclusion.
Expected result
Every key statement in the summary maps to one or more entries in the evidence table.
Troubleshooting
- Search is too broad: add population, time, and method constraints.
- Full text is unavailable: do not let a summarizer invent the missing content.
- Sources conflict: record differences in methods and samples side by side.