Agentic AI2025Independent

Signal Desk Agent

Agentic research workflow that turns questions into structured briefs

Agentic research tool that turns a question into a structured brief by searching, retrieving, and formatting relevant information into a usable report.

TypeScriptReactExpressOpenAI Responses APIWeb SearchZod

Visual evidence

Structured intelligence brief

Signal Desk brief with summary, counters, section navigation and typed findings

Supplementary evidence

Typed findings with confidence and sources

Signal Desk findings grid with category, confidence and source per finding

Case study

Problem, Build, Outcome

Problem

Research workflows often stall between open-ended search, source triage, and producing a brief that is structured enough to act on.

Build

Built a React and Express app where the model runs web search and must save findings and timeline events through typed tool calls before submitting a Zod-validated brief.

Outcome

Cuts the path from question to usable research artifact while keeping the output easier to inspect than a raw chat response.

Architecture

System Flow

1Question
2Agent plan
3Retrieval
4Brief

Architecture Notes

  • Planning stage breaks an open-ended question into a usable research path.
  • Retrieval stage gathers relevant information before synthesis.
  • Formatting stage produces a structured brief instead of an unshaped chat answer.

Engineering choices

Technical Decisions

Structured the workflow around question decomposition before retrieval so the agent has an explicit plan.

Separated retrieval and brief formatting to keep the final artifact easier to inspect than a raw chat response.

Used structured output expectations so downstream readers get consistent sections.

Evidence

Proof Points

Question-to-brief agent workflow

Tool-use oriented retrieval path

Structured output for downstream use

Next read

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