AI Research Checklist

Write the question, the decision it serves, and what a useful answer must include. List sources you can open. A checklist item with no source is a reminder to search, not a license to ask the model to invent one. Stop if the question is really a request for professional advice you are not qualified to give.

Separate facts you know from hopes you have. Paste only the facts, labeled as such. Tell Gemini the hopes are out of bounds for the answer. This keeps a literature note from turning into a pitch. It also keeps a market scan from confirming the idea you already love.

Decide the note template before you paste: question, method, finding, limitation, and a gap field. A template stops the model from writing a smooth essay that hides what is missing. Use the same fields for every source so you can compare later. Change the fields if your field needs them, but do not drop the gap. A full-looking note with no gap is a warning.

Redact names, unpublished data, and anything your ethics board, employer, or source agreement would not allow in a third-party tool. This course is independent of Google and cannot promise how a vendor stores prompts. When product settings mention history or training, check the current screen and read them. If you cannot redact safely, do not paste. Read beside the chat instead.

Work one source at a time. Ask for extraction into your template and for the words not in the excerpt whenever a field is unsupported. Do not ask for related papers. If a related title appears anyway, delete it rather than chasing it inside the chat. Find candidates later in a real library, then read them yourself.

Ask the model to quote short phrases and to name the heading they came from in your paste. Long paraphrases are where meaning drifts. If you need a paraphrase, ask for one labeled as paraphrase, then check it against the sentence. Never let a paraphrase pick up a number that was not in the excerpt. Numbers travel badly through summaries.

When you have several checked notes, ask for overlaps, tensions, and missing questions. Require each point to cite your note label. Reject any author, year, or page that you did not supply. This is a clustering aid. It is not a literature review. You still decide what the pattern means.

Keep a running list of surprises and of claims that would embarrass you if wrong. Those are the lines you verify first, not last. Ask Gemini to sort your list by how much a decision depends on them. Do not ask it to rank the scientific truth. Dependence is a practical sort. Truth is your job outside the chat.

Reopen the original for every quotation, page, date, and statistic you might repeat. A confident note is not a source. If the excerpt was partial, read the section around it before you cite. Models compress context and sometimes flip a limitation into a finding. The surrounding paragraph is where that shows up.

Check definitions against the source's own definition, not against a general explanation the model prefers. If two sources use the same word differently, keep both and say so. Do not let a synthesis paragraph collapse them for elegance. Elegance is how distinctions disappear. Your reader needs the distinction more than a smooth bridge.

Look up methods you do not understand in a textbook or the paper's method section, not in a fresh unsourced chat. You may ask Gemini to quiz you on a method after you have read it. You may not ask it to pretend you read it. Mark your own uncertainty in the note. An honest limit is a finding about your review, and it belongs in the draft.

If a claim fails verification, fix the note before you write forward. Do not leave a wrong line because the paragraph already sounds finished. Tell the next prompt that the corrected note replaces the old one. Old errors linger in long chats. Start a new chat for the synthesis if the thread contains rejected claims.

Write the synthesis in your own words from the verified notes. You may ask for an outline of headings only. You may ask which of your notes a paragraph should lean on. You should not ask for the paragraph plus citations. The moment the model writes the argument, you stop practicing judgment.

Add a short uncertainty section: what you did not read, what conflicted, and what would change your mind. Ask Gemini to check that section against your gap fields and to point out a gap you dropped. Then confirm that suggestion in the notes. Do not add a gap you cannot tie to a source or to an absence. Invented humility is still invention.

Prepare the question a supervisor, editor, or client will ask: where did this come from? For each major claim in your outline, you should be able to point to a file. If you cannot, the claim is not ready. Ask the model to list claims in your outline that have no note label. That list is your rewrite queue, not a criticism of you.

Store the notes, the sources, and the prompts apart from the chat log. Name the date you verified. A note without a date becomes folklore next month. When you reuse a prompt, check the current screen only for how to paste. The checklist stays the same when the buttons move.