parallel-deep-research

Exhaustive research with configurable depth, latency, and cost trade-offs for complex topics.

- Three processor tiers (pro-fast, ultra-fast, ultra) ranging from 30 seconds to 25 minutes, with cost scaling from 1x to 3x baseline

- Asynchronous execution with polling: kick off research instantly, monitor progress via URL, retrieve results when ready without blocking

- Outputs formatted markdown report and JSON metadata; executive summary printed to stdout for quick overview

- Designed for explicit user requests ("deep research," "exhaustive," "comprehensive") - use parallel-web-search for routine lookups

Deep Research

Research topic: $ARGUMENTS

Requires parallel-cli ≥ 0.3.0. If any command below errors with no such option, no such command, or unrecognized arguments, the user is on an older CLI. Tell them to run parallel-cli update (or pipx upgrade parallel-web-tools if installed via pipx), then retry.

When to use (vs parallel-web-search)

ONLY use this skill when the user explicitly requests deep/exhaustive research. Deep research is 10-100x slower and more expensive than parallel-web-search. For normal "research X" requests, quick lookups, or fact-checking, use parallel-web-search instead.

Step 1: Start the research

Choose a descriptive filename based on the topic (e.g., ai-chip-market-2026, react-vs-vue-comparison). Use lowercase with hyphens, no spaces. Reuse this base name in step 2 as -o "$FILENAME".

parallel-cli research run "$ARGUMENTS" --processor pro-fast --text --no-wait --json

The --text flag tells the API to return a markdown report (with inline citations) when the task completes, instead of the default structured JSON. Use it for narrative/report-style requests, which is what most users want from "deep research." Drop --text if the user explicitly wants structured JSON output.