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Entering a new field without a mentor, it’s hard to know which papers everyone considers foundational. This tutorial uses the financial instability hypothesis in behavioral economics as the example. You’ll learn how to:
  1. Identify landmark papers in any discipline
  2. Get a deep walkthrough of a foundational paper’s core contribution
  3. Visualize a citation graph to see a paper’s place in the field

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Step 1: Ask for the seminal work

Research Agent identifies the key author behind the theory, runs an author search for their work, and runs a broader search for other highly referenced papers. It reads the full text and abstracts of the strongest candidates and returns a table of key works, their core contributions, and why each counts as seminal.

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Step 2: Deep-read the most cited paper

Consensus uses the context from the first search, identifies the most cited paper (the original Minsky paper), reads its full text, and summarizes the core theoretical insights. Ask follow-ups for deeper analysis.

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Step 3: Open the citation graph

Hover over the paper, open it, and click Graph. Consensus generates a citation graph of highly related papers that either cite this paper or are cited by it, both forward and backward in time. Hover any node to see its connections.
From here you can ask for a research timeline, a research gaps analysis, or similar papers from the last few years. See Citation Graph.

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Reading what Research Agent did

Every Pro answer opens with a trace of the agent’s work: how many papers it retrieved, how many were eligible, how many it included, and the sub-searches it ran with their filters. Expand it to check that the plan matched your intent before you trust the summary.
A Research Agent trace showing retrieved, eligible, and included counts and the sub-searches run

The agent's plan: two parallel searches, 49.7K retrieved, 61 eligible, 12 read.

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Reading the citation graph

A citation graph with three seed clusters connected by citation arrows

Older papers sit left, newer right; node size is citation count; color marks each seed's cluster.

Use + Seed to promote a result and regenerate, the minus button to exclude one, and Density to show 20, 40, or 60 papers. See Citation Graph for how ranking works.

Trace citations forward and backward

Map the history of a field