Sanaf, the AI employee

An AI research analyst

Every week there is a question that deserves a real answer and gets a guess instead: what a competitor charges, whether a supplier is solid, what the rules are in the next state, who the right people are at a prospect. This job does the digging and comes back with a short brief that says where each fact came from.

What it does

Concretely

  • Researches companies, competitors, markets and suppliers.
  • Checks facts against each other rather than trusting the first source.
  • Writes short briefs with every source cited.
  • Builds the comparison table or the shortlist you asked for.
  • Keeps a library of past research so the same question is not redone.

Decisions get made on a guess because nobody had the afternoon

The research that would have changed a decision is usually not difficult, it is just a few hours that nobody has in the week the decision is being made. So the choice gets made on an impression, and the impression is rarely revisited. The value here is less about sophistication than about the work happening at all, in time to matter.

A brief without sources is an opinion

Research that cannot be checked is worth very little, particularly when it was assembled quickly. Every claim in a brief carries the source it came from, so a reader can follow the ones the decision hangs on. That also makes it obvious where the thin parts are, which is usually the most useful thing a brief can tell you.

It separates what it found from what it thinks

Findings and interpretation are kept apart, and where sources disagree or run out it says so instead of smoothing it over. It does not make the decision. Nothing it finds about a person is used beyond what was asked for, which is a line that matters more in research than in most jobs on the roster.

Questions

Frequently asked

How do we know the research is accurate?
You check it, and it is built to be checkable. Every fact carries its source, contradictions between sources are stated rather than resolved silently, and where the trail runs out the brief says so. A confident brief with no sources is the failure mode this is designed against.
Can it do due diligence on a supplier or a partner?
It can assemble what is publicly available and check it against itself: filings, public records, what the company says about itself, what others say. That is the groundwork. It is not a substitute for a professional opinion where one is warranted, and it will say which is which.
Does it repeat work we have already done?
It keeps what it has found before, so a question asked again starts from the previous brief rather than from nothing. Research being quietly redone every few months is one of the more common wastes in a small team, and it happens because the first answer was never written down anywhere findable.