Research reports

jChat

1. Coming soonresearch reports come with the next update of your box. Until then, the last30days app on your desktop does research.

Your companion can research a topic for you on the web and write it up as a research report. The report is a PDF that you can read on your phone and forward to your team or a client as it is.

Ask for a research report

Ask your companion the way you ask for anything else: by text message, email, jChat, Slack, or Telegram. Say what you want to know about, for example "research the market for electric bike subscriptions" or "research what heat pumps cost to run in a cold climate". In a chat, a text message, or a call, your companion tells you right away that it started, and a few minutes later it answers in the same conversation with a short summary and the report. In email, you get one reply, and it has the report.

Here is what a text conversation looks like:

jChat

1. You: Research the market for electric bike subscriptions.
2. MinaOn it. I'll send you the report in a few minutes.
3. MinaSubscriptions are growing fastest in cities that pay part of the fee, and repairs are the main cost for the companies. Two large providers changed their prices this year. Here's the full report: https://…

In email, Slack, and Telegram, the PDF comes as an attachment. In jChat, your companion opens the report on your desktop and gives you a link to it. A text message cannot carry a file, so your companion sends a link instead, and the link opens the PDF on your phone without a sign-in. If Slack or Telegram does not take the file, your companion sends the link there too.

What is in a research report

Each research report has the same parts:

• An overview, in a few paragraphs.
• The key findings, each with the sources that back it.
• One section for each theme. A section has a picture when one of its sources has a suitable one, with the name of the source under the picture.
• A short box "What people are saying" with at most five posts from social media and forums.
• At the end, the list of the pages that your companion read.

Your companion searches the web for news, research, and official and company pages, recent and older, and it reads the best pages in full. Each fact in the report links to the page that it comes from. Your companion reads only public sources, so private groups, paid sites, and pages that need a sign-in are not in the report. If a source could not be reached, the report says so, and the report covers the other sources.

When your companion finds little about a topic, the report is short and says so.

Choose the sections

Your companion picks the sections of a research report from what it finds. You can name the sections yourself, and the report then has those sections in your order, for example "research CLARA Analytics, with sections on funding, product launches, and competitors". You can name up to 6. When your companion finds nothing for a section, the report leaves that section out.

When a name belongs to more than one company or product, tell your companion which one you mean, for example "CLARA Analytics, the claims AI company, not the Clara agent of Hippo". Your companion asks you when it sees that a topic can mean more than one thing. It keeps facts about the other company or product out of the report, also when a source mixes the two up. For a regular update, put the same words in the notes.

A regular update has one part for each topic, so its topics are its sections.

Find an old report

Your companion keeps each report in the folder Research in joshu's files, as a PDF and as a page that you can open in the browser. To find an old report, ask your companion, for example "send me the electric bike report again", or open the folder yourself.

Get regular updates on a topic

Your companion can follow a topic for you and send you an update on a schedule, with only what is new since the last update. Ask by email, text message, Slack, or Telegram. Say what to follow, how often, and anything about how the update should look. You can name more than one topic in one request, and your companion keeps them together in one update, in separate parts.

Here is what a text conversation looks like:

jChat

1. You: Every weekday at 7 am, send me what's new in humanoid robots and in defense robotics contracts. Keep it to 8 items, and add one line on why each one matters for my startup.
2. MinaDone. Every weekday at 7:00 am I'll email you an update with two parts, Humanoid robots and Defense robotics contracts. I'll look at web and news pages, X, Reddit, and YouTube, because that's where these topics get the most coverage. I'll keep it to 8 items, with a line on why each one matters to you. Your first update comes tomorrow at 7:00 am.

Your companion sends each update by email, unless you ask for another channel, e.g., a text message, Slack, or Telegram. To change anything later, tell your companion, for example "add a part on rare earth supply" or "send it on Mondays only", or change it in the Research app.

What an update looks like

Your companion groups the pages and posts that it finds into stories. A story brings together everything about the same event from all your sources, e.g., a news article, a Reddit thread, and a YouTube video, and the update names the sources of each story.

Your companion also compares the stories with the ones from the last update. An update shows two kinds of stories:

• New: a story that no earlier update had.
• Developing: a story from an earlier update that has new pages or posts since then, from any of your sources.

A story that you already got comes back only when there is something new about it. A story that went quiet is not in the update, but you can see it in the Research app.

Your companion writes each update the way you asked: how many items, the order of the parts, a line on why each story matters, or a short summary at the top. You can change that any time, for example "start with the deals" or "skip the why it matters lines". By email, each update also has the full update attached as a PDF, with every story and charts of how much coverage each part got over time. On the other channels, ask your companion for the full update, and it sends that PDF.

Your first update is a starting update. There is no earlier update to compare with, so it shows the main stories of each part right now, and every story in it is new.

Choose the sources

When you set up a regular update, your companion picks the sources that fit your topics and tells you which ones it picked and why. You can leave it like that, or pick the sources yourself, for example "only news and Reddit" or "add TikTok". You can choose from:

• Web and news
• Research papers
• Company data (the stock price and the filings of one public company)
• Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram

Your companion keeps the same sources from one update to the next, so the updates stay comparable. It picks the sources again only when you change the topics.

Ask again about an earlier report

When you ask about a topic that your companion already researched for you, it sends you what changed since that report, not a new report from the start. If it is not sure which report you mean, it asks, for example "Do you want an update of your October 21 report on Clara Analytics, or a new report?" To get a new report from the start, say so.

The Research app

Open Research on your desktop to see all your reports. The app lists your regular updates, with their schedule and what the last run found, and your one-time reports, with their date. Click a report to open it, or click a regular update to see each update that your companion sent and the stories that it is following.

To set up a regular update in the app, click New report. Type the topics, choose Once or Recurring and the days and time, choose Auto or the sources you want, choose where to send it, and write any notes on how the update should look. For a report that you get once, you can also type the sections you want, one on each line, and notes on what the topic means. Then click Create. You can also pause, change, or delete a regular update in the app.

Good to know

• If your topic can mean more than one thing, your companion asks you one short question before it starts. For example, "Apple" can be the company or the fruit.
• Anybody who has the link to a report can open the report, so forward the link only to people who may read the report.
• If your companion cannot finish a report within about 10 minutes, it tells you so, and you can ask again.
• If you ask on a phone call, your companion calls you back, tells you what the report found, and texts you the link. When it cannot call you, for example late in the evening or when you miss the call, it texts you the summary and the link instead.
• When there is nothing new, your companion sends you nothing. If you'd rather hear "nothing new today", tell your companion. When a regular update has had nothing new for several runs in a row, the Research app marks it as quiet, so you can change the topics or delete it.
• If your companion cannot finish an update, it sends you a short note that the update failed. The next update covers everything since the last update that you got.
• Updates come by email, text message, Slack, or Telegram. jChat cannot receive a scheduled message, so your companion cannot send updates there.
• Your companion uses your time zone from Welcome for the schedule.
• The last30days app is gone. If you watched topics in it, your companion moved them into one regular update with the same schedule, one part for each topic, and its first update after the change is a starting update. Your old last30days results stay in the folder research/last30days in joshu's files.
• Each update stays in the folder Research in joshu's files, so you can ask your companion about it later, for example "what happened with the Army humanoid contract last month?"

Next: Help.