Skill: research and briefing

What this is

Research is the skill most people try first, because it is the one that feels safest: reading, comparing and summarising, with nothing sent and nothing changed. In Korps a worker researches by reading pages through a browser session, reading documents in tools you connect, remembering what it found for the team, and writing the result where you asked.

A word on the word. In Korps, a skill is a packaged capability a worker's runtime can carry, and Korps can roll a skill out to a fleet of workers and check it is compatible with each runtime. On this page, and in this section of the hub, "skill" is used in the everyday sense: a thing a worker can do for you. The two meet when a capability is packaged so several workers get it at once.

Who it helps

Anyone who needs to know something regularly and does not have time to look: market and competitor watching, supplier and vendor comparison, prospect research before a call, background reading before a meeting.

Examples

• Before a sales call. "Read this prospect's website and public profile and tell me, in five lines, what they do, who they sell to, and what they are likely to ask us."
• Vendor comparison. "Compare these four payroll providers on the features listed in the room. One table, one row per provider, a link for each cell."
• Meeting prep. "Read the three documents in the Board folder and give me the five decisions the papers are asking for."
• Monitoring. See the competitor research playbook, which turns this skill into a daily routine.

How it works in Korps

1. The worker opens a browser session through the browser provider your organisation has configured, reads the page, and can take a screenshot you can look at later.
2. For documents, it reads through a connection you signed in to: Google Drive, Dropbox, Notion, Confluence and the like.
3. What it learns can be stored in team memory, so tomorrow's worker starts from today's findings rather than from nothing.
4. It writes the brief to the room or document you named, and Activity records each source it read, so every claim can be traced.

Requirements and availability

• Available in Korps: browser sessions, tool connections, team memory, rooms, routines, Activity.
• A browser provider. Korps supports Browserbase (a hosted browser on your own Browserbase account), a local browser beside the control plane, or the runtime's own browser. One must be configured; Browserbase is metered on your account.
• A model that reads well. Long documents and careful comparison favour a stronger model; simple monitoring can run on an economical one. See choosing a model.
• A runtime (Hermes Agent comes bundled). The free account is open now; the app that hosts workers opens at launch.

Limitations and approval points

• A worker reads what a page shows. Login walls, paywalls, sites that block automated reading, and content that only appears after interaction produce gaps. The right behaviour is to say "could not read", and your assignment should require it.
• Models can misread numbers and dates, and can state a guess as a fact. Require a link for every claim and check the ones that matter.
• Research that touches individuals is personal data. Decide the boundary (public professional information only, for instance) before the first assignment.
• Approval points for research are usually two: adding a new source, and any contact with a third party. Reading itself rarely needs approval; sending always does.