Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Unconventional Deep Research Use Cases (2025-07-13)

Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Unconventional Deep Research Use Cases (2025-07-13) :: View in Browser

The Big Plug

👉 My new book, Almost Timeless: 48 Foundation Principles of Generative AI is now available!

Content Authenticity Statement

100% of this week's newsletter was generated by me, the human. You will see bountiful AI outputs in the video. Learn why this kind of disclosure is a good idea and might be required for anyone doing business in any capacity with the EU in the near future.

Watch This Newsletter On YouTube 📺

Click here for the video 📺 version of this newsletter on YouTube »

Click here for an MP3 audio 🎧 only version »

Share

What's On My Mind: Unconventional Deep Research Use Cases

In this week’s newsletter, let’s dig deep into Deep Research. Dig, delve, whatever the popular term is these days. Deep Research is probably the most under-rated AI tool we have access to, and at the cost of a premium membership ($20 a month per user) it’s a steal.

Let’s take a look at a few different use cases for Deep Research to see how you could be using it more effectively.

Part 1: What is Deep Research?

We’ll start with an understanding of what Deep Research is. In software like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok… basically every major AI foundation provider, there’s an option to select Deep Research (or something similarly named). These are AI agents. Once you give them a prompt, they go off and do their best to execute the prompt as directed.

This is a critical thing to understand: Deep Research agents are just AI agents. They’re tuned to do research, to gather information, yes. But they’re also capable of more than just strictly research. Any text output you could want that involves gathering and synthesizing information from public sources, they are capable of doing to one extent or another, and that’s the secret to their power.

Most paid plans offer Deep Research, so it’s probably just a matter of looking for the appropriate buttons in your interface.

Most Deep Research plans also have limits for how many reports you can run. For example, on ChatGPT, the Plus plan offers 10 full size reports a month and 15 shorter, less thorough reports.

My personal preference right now is Google Gemini’s Deep Research because the limits are incredibly generous (250 a month) and the reports are quite thorough, but use whatever you’re already paying for. No one platform is so dramatically better than another that there's an imperative to buy into just one.

One really important thing to mention here: Deep Research tools are still AI. That means they still make mistakes, which in turn means you still need to fact check their outputs. Don't assume that just because a tool did its research means that it got things right.

Part 2: Deep Research Prompting

The most important part of Deep Research is the prompt, because you want graet results - and with a limited number of uses, you can't afford to be re-running the same reports over and over again. To create great research prompts, you want to use a framework, and the framework I recommend is the Trust Insights CASINO Deep Research Framework.

Here's how you use it. First, you'll open up the AI tool of your choice in regular mode - NOT deep research mode. Then draft out an overview of the Deep Research task you want to accomplish. Once you've done that, drop in the CASINO PDF and this prompt:

Using the Trust Insights CASINO Framework (included as a PDF), ask the user one question at a time and only one question at a time until you have all the information you require to build a complete CASINO prompt for Deep Research. If the user has not provided the CASINO framework as a PDF, ask them to provide it. The goal is a rich, deep, comprehensive research prompt in the CASINO format. Specify each part of the CASINO format in subheadings in your final output. Your final output should be Markdown format. Remember that you are outputting a CASINO formatted prompt, not executing the prompt. Your results should be the CASINO formatted prompt.

What will happen next is that the generative AI tool of your choice will ask you questions until it has enough information to build the prompt. I recommend using a reasoning model for this task, which means:

• Google Gemini 2.5 Pro

• Anthropic Claude Sonnet or Opus 4 with Extending Thinking

• ChatGPT with the o3 model

• Any other appropriate model that has reasoning mode (there are many, many)

You'll answer the questions, and at the end of the process, you'll get a prompt. Copy that prompt, then start a new chat with Deep Research mode turned on, paste in your prompt, and you're off to the races.

Now, let's talk use cases for Deep Research.

Part 3: Company Context Engineering / Knowledge Blocks

In my new book, Almost Timeless: 48 Foundation Principles of Generative AI, Principle 25: It's Easier To Build With Bricks than Mud is all about having knowledge blocks, chunks of pre-built information you can drop into prompts to make them far more effective. The AI nerd herd now calls this "context engineering", as though we needed an even more belabored, confusing piece of jargon, but here we are.

Deep Research tools make this a breeze. Consider a research prompt starter like this, substituting your business, of course:

Let's build a comprehensive profile of the business Trust Insights, found at TrustInsights.ai. I want to know everything about this company - what its strengths and weaknesses are, who its customers are, who its competitors are, analysis of it like from business school frameworks like SWOT, BCG Growth Matrix, Porter's Five Forces, and whatever else was being taught during my MBA program. I want to avoid gossip and unfounded information, so we need to focus on credible information and sources.

Then paste in the rest of the Trust Insights CASINO framework prompt, drop in the CASINO framework, and generate the research prompt. Then as before, copy the entire research prompt and let the Deep Research tool go do the heavy lifting on your company.

What you end up with is a comprehensive research report about your company from the outside in - a valuable perspective, especially if you're too close to things. It's also a great way to fact check what AI knows about you - I did this recently for a client and they found the AI was referencing stuff that should have gone away after a rebrand.

What do you do with this output? Any time you need to do some marketing or strat