The research lifecycle

CoSci’s core idea is that research is a loop, not a search box. Most tools do one slice — literature search, or hypothesis generation. CoSci models the whole cycle and versions every step, so your research memory compounds instead of scattering across chat windows.

The eight stages

1. Incubate — throw in a rough idea; get ranked candidate questions.
2. Sharpen — narrow to one specific, doable question worth answering.
3. Competing mechanisms — lay out rival explanations, not a single guess.
4. Killer experiment — design the test that distinguishes them, behind a kill-criteria gate.
5. Observe — record real observations against your predictions.
6. Update beliefs — revise confidence as evidence comes in.
7. Write — generate proposal and manuscript packets (a 3-agent draft + critic).
8. Remember — everything lands in a versioned wiki + canvas memory.

Why a cockpit

Because the stages share state. The question you sharpen constrains the mechanisms; the mechanisms define the killer experiment; the observations update your beliefs; the beliefs shape what you write. When each stage is a separate tool, that context leaks away. CoSci keeps it — versioned and auditable — which is also the moat: the accumulated, structured research history is hard to reproduce elsewhere.

Where each stage lives

The quick start maps these stages onto the app’s screens — Capture, Experiments, Proposals, and the Agents/Runs log that shows every model and tool call behind them.