Data research systems

Research systems that know what they don't know

Automated research pipelines that score coverage, detect gaps, and trace every data point back to its source.

The problem

Your research has blind spots

Manual collection doesn't scale

Your team copies data from websites, cross-references spreadsheets, and maintains lists by hand. It works at small scale — but when you need to track hundreds of entities across dozens of sources, manual research becomes the bottleneck. What should be an automated pipeline is a team of people doing copy-paste. When those sources live behind interfaces with no API, screen-based automation can extract data directly.

You don't know what you're missing

Without coverage scoring, there's no way to measure research completeness. Is your intelligence on a brand based on three sources or thirty? Are there entire market segments you haven't looked at? You can't make decisions on data you don't know is incomplete.

Source reliability is untracked

Not all sources are equal, but your research treats them as if they were. A press release, an industry report, and a blog post carry different weight — yet they all end up in the same spreadsheet with no provenance, no date, and no way to verify where the information came from.

How it works

From manual collection to systematic intelligence

1

Intelligence audit

I map your current research process — what you track, where you source it, how you verify it, and where the gaps are. We identify the entities, relationships, and data points that matter most to your business decisions.

Research scope map
2

Data architecture

I design the entity schema, source registry, and coverage scoring system. Every data point gets a source URL, a date, and a reliability score. The schema models your domain — not generic records, but the specific entities and relationships your business needs.

Entity schema & coverage model
3

Build

Production development with automated research pipelines, entity resolution, and coverage tracking. You see real data flowing through the system weekly — sources being scored, entities being resolved, gaps being identified.

Working research system
4

Deploy & expand

Ship to production, expand source coverage, tune reliability scoring. The system grows with your intelligence needs — new entity types, new sources, and new analysis capabilities plug into the existing framework.

Production deploy
Real results

Every fact sourced, every gap scored

0%
Source attribution

Every fact in the system has a source URL, a date, and an author. No unsourced claims, no undated information, no untracked AI outputs. If it's in the database, you can verify where it came from.

Scored
Coverage per entity

Coverage scoring tells you what you know and what you don't — per brand, per entity type, per data category. Gap analysis identifies the specific intelligence missing from your picture, so research effort targets what matters most.

Automated
Competitive price tracking

Register price sources, sweep tracked URLs, view pricing status across the portfolio — all automated. The competitive intelligence that used to take a team of analysts runs as a scheduled pipeline. Read how it was built.

Case study

From raw data to intelligence

  • Entity resolution with alias-aware lookup across brand names, calibre references, and supply-chain entities in multiple languages
  • Coverage scoring and gap analysis measuring research completeness per brand — surfacing exactly where intelligence is missing
  • Automated price tracking across registered sources with competitive pricing intelligence and portfolio-wide status views
Read the full case study
Tech stack

Built for provenance

Research engine
SQLiteentity resolutionalias-aware lookupcoverage algorithmsgap analysis
Data pipelines
MCP toolsFastify APIstructured extractionZod schemaspage-extract
Intelligence
Price trackingcompetitive monitoringsource reliability rankingmulti-source aggregation
Frontend
Next.jsReact 19dashboardglobal command paletteentity CRUD
Frequently asked questions

Common questions

What does 'coverage scoring' actually mean?

Coverage scoring measures how complete your intelligence is on a given entity. If you're tracking a brand, the system knows whether you have pricing data, supply-chain information, recent news, and financial metrics — or whether there are gaps. The score tells you where additional research will yield the most value, so your team focuses effort where it matters most.

How do you handle data from unreliable sources?

Every source in the system has a reliability ranking. An industry report from a recognised institution carries more weight than an unverified blog post. The ranking is transparent — you can see why a data point is scored the way it is and override it if your domain expertise says otherwise. This is the same principle behind governed AI workflows: decisions are traceable, not opaque.

Can this connect to our existing data sources?

Yes. The research pipeline uses typed MCP tools for data access — adding a new source means adding a new tool, not rewriting the system. Whether your data lives in a CRM, a financial platform, a content management system, a mobile application, or behind an API, the integration pattern is the same: structured extraction with source attribution.

How is this different from a BI tool like Tableau or Power BI?

BI tools visualize data you already have. A custom research system gathers, validates, and scores data you don't have yet. It's the difference between a dashboard and a pipeline. BI tools answer 'what does our data say?' A research system answers 'what do we know, what are we missing, and how much can we trust what we have?'

How does the system stay current as data sources change?

Every research pipeline includes source-health monitoring. If a source goes offline, changes its structure, or stops returning data, the system flags it immediately rather than silently serving stale results. Refresh cadences are configurable per source — market prices might update hourly, regulatory filings weekly, and industry reports on publication. The same governed automation patterns that manage workflows handle data freshness: every update is logged, every gap is visible, and your team decides the priority.

Stop researching blind.

Let's talk about turning manual data collection into systematic intelligence.