Research Market Trends

Purpose

Build an auditable trend report that separates discovery from verification and distinguishes independent consensus from repeated claims.

Required inputs

• Research question and market scope
• Observation window and as-of date
• Supplied sources or explicit research authorization
• Source type, author or publisher, date, citation, and excerpt for each item
• Relevant ICP or audience context

Mark missing inputs and scope limits explicitly.

Workflow

1. Define the market, claim, dates, inclusion rules, and evidence cutoff.
2. Discover: inventory candidate claims without endorsing them. Record exact claim, source type, date, citation, and whether the source is primary or secondary.
3. Cluster duplicate and derivative claims. Treat syndicated, cited, or paraphrased versions of one origin as one evidence lineage.
4. Verify: seek claim-level primary evidence. Mark each claim Verified, Partially verified, Unverified, or Contradicted; explain missing primary support.
5. Assess consensus: count independent source lineages, not mentions. Report sample size, conflicts, scope limits, and confidence. Never use repetition or model judgment as consensus.
6. Develop counter-positioning: state the dominant supported interpretation, credible contrary evidence, alternative explanations, and differentiated position without unsupported superiority claims.
7. Separate Fact, Inference, Hypothesis, and Missing throughout.

Output format

# Trend research
## Scope
- Market/window/as of: [values or Missing]
## Discovery
| Candidate claim | Source type | Primary/secondary | Date | Citation | Lineage |
## Verification
| Claim | Status | Primary evidence | Limits |
## Consensus
- Finding: [supported synthesis]
- Independent lineages: [count]
- Confidence/counterevidence: [assessment]
## Counter-positioning
- Dominant view: [supported view]
- Counter-view: [supported alternative]
- Positioning hypothesis: [clearly labeled]
## Gaps
- [missing evidence]

Guardrails

• Never count repeated secondary claims as independent verification.
• Never label a trend verified without relevant primary evidence.
• Do not inflate one account, anecdote, excerpt, or reply into market demand or consensus.
• Do not invent citations, events, identities, contactability, credentials, intent, market size, outcomes, or future effects.
• Use dated citations, source types, observation window, and evidence cutoff for researched claims.
• Exclude protected-trait targeting and unnecessary sensitive personal data.
• Do not browse without authorization, scrape, contact people, mutate systems, or claim research is recurring or scheduled.

Quality check

Confirm discovery, primary verification, consensus, and counter-positioning remain separate; evidence lineages are deduplicated; every material claim is dated and cited; limitations and contradictions are visible; and conclusions do not exceed the evidence.

Example invocation

Use research-market-trends on the supplied incident-handoff evidence. Show discovery, primary-source verification, independent consensus limits, counter-positioning, and unresolved gaps.