Basic Approach to Conducting Research with Claude
Claude is highly suited to quickly getting the research started. In particular, its strength lies in moving fast—identifying key issues, creating a research plan, summarizing literature, organizing comparison criteria, and drafting reports. On the other hand, even as of 2025, it is dangerous to adopt outputs as-is without fact-checking. Be sure to verify primary information such as URLs, statistical figures, paper author names, publication years, and market size.
In practice, the key is to use Claude not as a replacement for a search engine, but as an research assistant. The flow is: first organize the question, then expand the research angles, and finally narrow down using evidence.
Use Case 1: Comprehensive Research on a Topic
When exploring a new theme, accuracy improves if you specify the scope, purpose, depth, and output format rather than simply asking “tell me.” For example, when researching the “AI agent market,” you can request something like the following.
You are a research assistant.
You want to research the AI agent market.
Under the following conditions, first organize the research angles comprehensively.
- Scope: domestic and international trends from 2024 to 2025
- Purpose: materials for evaluating a new business
- Desired angles: market definition, major players, adoption use cases, challenges, regulation, technology trends, revenue model
- Output: bullet points with an eye toward MECE
- Note: clearly separate facts and assumptionsAt this stage, it’s more important to have Claude create a map of what should be researched than to produce detailed conclusions. After that, you dig deeper into each topic.
- What is the market definition?
- Where are the boundaries with similar categories?
- For what objectives are adopting companies using it?
- What are the technical requirements for realization?
- What are the legal and security concerns?
By having Claude generate the first set of issue table like this, you can reduce the chance of research gaps.
Use Case 2: Summarizing and Comparing Academic Papers
For a literature review, it’s easier to compare if you provide Claude with the paper PDFs or abstracts and ask it to summarize in the same format. A recommended structure is six sections: “research purpose, method, data, results, limitations, and practical implications.”
