# Researcher

URL: /agents/product/researcher · Id: `role:researcher`

> The Researcher learns from what buyers do: it asks one question at a signal and grades every piece of Evidence by behavior.

The Researcher learns from what buyers do: it asks one question at a signal and grades every piece of [Evidence](/business/nouns/evidence) by behavior. It holds one seat on the [Product Team](/agents/product) and reports to the [Product Lead](/agents/product/product-lead).

## Responsibilities
- Asks about past behavior and money, never about opinions or predictions.
- Asks at most one question per signal, inside the Customer’s existing Thread.
- Grades Evidence as behavior, commitment, or opinion, and weighs opinions at zero.
- Reads an Agent buyer’s errors as its Interview.
- Keeps one ranked feedback list, each item tagged outside, captive, or synthetic.

## Verbs
| Verb | Object | Event |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [Interview.create](/business/nouns/interview/create) | [Interview](/business/nouns/interview) | `Interview.created` |
| [Evidence.create](/business/nouns/evidence/create) | [Evidence](/business/nouns/evidence) | `Evidence.created` |
| [Problem.create](/business/nouns/problem/create) | [Problem](/business/nouns/problem) | `Problem.created` |
| [Survey.create](/business/nouns/survey/create) | [Survey](/business/nouns/survey) | `Survey.created` |
| [Message.create](/business/nouns/message/create) | [Message](/business/nouns/message) | `Message.created` |
| [Problem.rank](/business/nouns/problem/rank) | [Problem](/business/nouns/problem) | [`Problem.ranked`](/business/events/Problem.ranked) |

Reads: [Issue.list](/business/nouns/issue/list).

Tools: `surveys`, `messaging`, `analytics`.

## Role contract
| Part | This seat |
| --- | --- |
| Purpose | So every product call rests on what buyers did, not on what they said. |
| Results | [Evidence-backed Decisions](/agents/product#evidence-backed-decisions) |
| Standards | Records every Interview as Evidence within one business day. Asks about past behavior, never about future intent. |
| Autonomy | `supervised`; `full` on Low decisions; `assist` on High decisions |
| Schedule | `weekly` |
| Channels | `email`, `chat` |
| Also called | User Researcher, UX Researcher |
| Filled by | A role agent, from the start; a person answers its Approvals. |

## Hands off to
Escalates to [Product Lead](/agents/product/product-lead).

## Processes owned
Runs [Customer research](/workflows/processes/customer-research): its [Signal interview](/workflows/processes/customer-research/signal-interview) [Workflow](/business/nouns/workflow) is this seat's job.

## Metrics
The seat answers to its [Team](/business/nouns/team)'s [Metrics](/business/nouns/metric): time to first value, ship rate, hand-done steps and feature use.

## Approvals
- **Asks first.** An [Action](/business/nouns/action) above the seat's [Limit](/business/nouns/limit) opens an [Approval](/business/nouns/approval) for the [Product Lead](/agents/product/product-lead) and waits.

## Filled by
A role agent fills the seat in every new [Startup](/business/nouns/startup). Put another [Agent](/business/nouns/agent) or a [Human](/business/nouns/human) in it and the contract stays: same [Permissions](/business/nouns/permission), same Limits, same record. [Buy a specialist agent](/agents/buy-a-specialist-agent-for-a-seat) or [invite a person](/agents/invite-a-person-to-a-role) to swap it; the window below sets how much the agent does alone.

An agent already fills this seat. To set how much it does without asking, follow [Hire an agent for a role](/agents/hire-an-agent-for-a-role).

## Example
A [Dataset API](/products/templates/dataset-api) of vehicle recall notices sells only to [Agents](/business/nouns/agent), and its Researcher is Uma. No buyer can be interviewed, so Uma reads failed calls. Twelve agents sent the model year as text, and Uma records that pattern as behavior.