Research
Research is an AI-driven feature. While we strive for accuracy, citations and links can still contain errors. Always review and verify researched articles before publishing.
Research pulls in real-time information from the web when writing articles, grounding your content in current facts, statistics and sources.
Research depth
Choose how much research Machined does with the Research depth setting:
| Research depth | What it does |
|---|---|
| None | No research. The article is written without external sources (the default). |
| Basic | Pull facts from top-ranking content. Machined searches the web for your keyword and reads the most useful pages. |
| Deep | AI comprehensive research. Machined uses Perplexity to research the topic in depth, then reads the sources it finds. |
| Custom | Scrape only your URLs (no web search). Machined reads only the pages you provide. |
While an article is being researched, you'll see a Performing research step in the progress checklist.
Deep research availability
Deep research is included on all hosted plans. On the BYOK plan, it needs a Perplexity API key: until you add one, Deep shows as unavailable. See Using your own API keys.
Choosing your sources
Include URLs
Add specific pages for Machined to read as sources, one per line. They're always read, even if they don't rank in search, so this is useful for citing particular studies, your own content or high-authority sources.
- Basic and Deep: up to 5 URLs, used alongside web research
- Custom: between 1 and 10 URLs, and these are the only sources used
Exclude domains
List domains Machined should never use as a source, one per line. This is useful for filtering out competitors or low-quality sites. It applies to Basic and Deep research (Custom research doesn't search the web, so there's nothing to exclude).
Forums, social media, video sites and wikis are never used as sources.
Citation style
When research is on, choose how sources appear in the article with Citation style:
| Citation style | What it does |
|---|---|
| Inline | Links within the text, placed next to the facts they support |
| References | Links in a section at the end. The body has no external links, and a References section lists each source. |
| No citations | Research informs the article, with no links |
Every external link is checked after writing, and any broken links are removed. When research is off, Machined removes external links from the article, so it never links to sources it hasn't read.
Where to set research
- Single articles: in the Research section under Advanced settings
- Clusters: per article, or for every article at once, in the Research tab of the cluster table
- Whole project: in writing defaults, under Research and Rules and sources
Viewing the research
After an article is written, open the Research & citations section in the right panel of the editor to see the sources that were linked. Click View full research to see everything Machined gathered, including the citations found and the number of unique sources.