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Find out whether people actually want your idea — backed by real conversations, not a guess. Give metalworks one sentence about what you want to build. It reads real conversations across your sources — Reddit, Hacker News, the web, your own data — and hands back a go/no-go verdict plus the specific needs people voiced, each one backed by a real quote you can open and read. This is the report every other step runs on, so do it first.

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Run it

/demand-report an affordable, jitter-free focus supplement for developers
A run prints something like: 
Strong demand — 312 distinct voices across 9 themes.
  187 people: jitter and crashes from caffeine-based focus products
   https://reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/... → "every pre-workout style focus thing wrecks me by 2pm..."
   94 people: hard to find something that isn't priced like a luxury subscription

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What you give it / what you get back

You give it one sentence and, optionally, a list of subreddits. You get back a report on research.demand:
FieldWhat it is
report.verdictA one-line go / no-go summary.
report.ranked_clustersThe real needs people voiced, ranked by how many different people raised each — not by how viral one post was. Each cluster has a claim, a distinct_author_count, and its quotes.
report.web_findingsSupporting facts pulled from the web, each carrying its real source URL.
report.partial, report.caveatSet when part of the run came up short (see below).
Every quote is the exact text of a real stored comment, matched — not paraphrased. Every count is the result of counting distinct authors, not a model’s estimate. If a finding can’t be tied to a real quote or a real source URL, metalworks drops it rather than shipping it. That’s why a “go” here is one you can defend line by line — see why you can trust the output.

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Want a richer brief first?

mw.research(question) works from one sentence. If you’d rather refine the question, set success criteria, and let metalworks suggest subreddits before it runs, plan first: 
brief = mw.plan("Should I build a focus-supplement brand for developers?")
report = mw.research(brief).demand      # hand the brief straight back

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Scope what it reads

mw.research(
    "...",
    subreddits=["Nootropics"],
    time_window_months=6,   # how far back to read (default 12)
    per_sub_limit=500,      # cap submissions pulled per subreddit
    max_findings=20,        # cap web findings
)

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Read from more sources

metalworks reads Reddit by default, and can also read Hacker News, the web, or your own data. Name the sources you want for a run: 
metalworks research run --question "..." --source reddit --source hackernews
See Sources to choose what to read from, or use your own data to load conversations you already have.

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Update a report later

Each run saves what it read, so your research data builds up over time. Collect more, then update the report to see what changed: 
metalworks corpus add --source hackernews -q "..."
metalworks research refresh <report-id>     # an updated report + what changed

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When the result is thin

metalworks tells you when there isn’t a real opening instead of inventing one. If the demand is weak or a part of the run degraded — say it couldn’t reach the web — the report comes back with partial=True and a plain-English caveat saying what happened. The later steps stay honest about it too, rather than building a launch plan on signal that isn’t there.

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Next

You have the report. Decide whether it’s worth building with the validation loop (GO / PIVOT / NO-GO), or turn it into what you need to launch: → Validation loop · Positioning · Competitors · Surface & screens · Marketing site · the full walkthrough