Verified against Gemini Deep Research · 2026-04-08
Turn a rough research question into a fully sourced Deep Research report
A research brief written specifically for Gemini's Deep Research agent — scope, source priorities, and structure spelled out — instead of a one-line question that produces a shallow, aggregator-sourced report.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
Use Deep Research for this. Here's the scope — don't loosen it once you're running. RESEARCH QUESTION Is on-device AI inference becoming cost-competitive with cloud inference for mid-size SaaS companies in 2026? MUST COVER hardware cost trends, latency tradeoffs, at least two vendor case studies, and total cost of ownership over 2 years SOURCE PREFERENCES Prioritize: vendor technical documentation, published benchmarks, and analyst reports from named firms Treat these only as context, not primary evidence — mention them only if you're also verifying the claim elsewhere: marketing blog posts and unverified Reddit/forum claims OUT OF SCOPE consumer-device on-device AI (phones/laptops) — this is about server-side SaaS inference only — don't wander into these even if a source brings them up. BEFORE YOU FINALIZE - Open primary sources where possible (original studies, filings, official documentation), not just aggregator summaries of them. - Where sources disagree, say so and name both positions instead of picking the one that sounds more authoritative. - Note the publication date of anything time-sensitive — don't present an older figure as current without flagging it. OUTPUT Structure the report as: executive summary, then one section per must-cover angle, then a recommendation, then sources End with a sources list, each one labeled by how you used it (primary evidence / context / disputed claim).
Customize the highlighted detailsoptional — the prompt above already works
Why this works
Deep Research runs an autonomous plan-search-read-revise loop rather than answering from a single pass, and that loop is steerable by what you hand it before it starts — a scope brief with explicit must-cover angles, excluded angles, and source preferences changes which search queries it generates and which pages it actually opens, instead of leaving it to converge on whatever ranks highest for the literal question. Real-world use of research agents shows a consistent bias toward the most SEO-visible aggregator pages over primary sources unless told otherwise, which is why the primary-sources instruction is stated as a requirement, not a preference. The publication-date instruction targets a specific and common failure: a well-optimized but stale page still ranks and gets cited as if its numbers were current.
Verified against
Gemini Deep Research Gemini 3 Pro · 2026-04-08
Changelog
- 2026-04-08 — Initial publish, verified against Gemini Deep Research on Gemini 3 Pro.
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