Sign inGet started
Paper · arXiv

Optimist Deep Research: An Iterative, State-Centric Agent for Autonomous Literature Research

Most retrieval-augmented systems treat literature search as a single retrieval step followed by summarization. Real literature research works differently: the investigator's understanding of the question changes as they read, new subquestions appear, and evidence is weighed, not just collected. We present Optimist Deep Research, an open-source agent that runs literature research as an iterative evidence-acquisition process over an explicit, mutable research state. A research question is broken into a tree of subquestions, each served by search intents that are translated into source-specific queries over arXiv, OpenAlex, Crossref, PubMed, Semantic Scholar and the web. Results are merged i...

AuthorsGihan Panapitiya
Primary categorycs.AI
Published16 October 2026
Last updated at source16 October 2026
cs.AI
Embed this entry
<iframe src="https://silytics.si/embed/item/1e16c9d1-654b-4a1e-bdea-2349d7743450" width="420" height="190" style="border:0" loading="lazy" title="Silytics entry"></iframe>

Free, no tracking. More about feeds and embeds.

Popularity, last 5 days

0 now. Counts as reported by the source, snapshotted daily by Silytics.

Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 23 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.