The Deep Research Agent ships with a full-stack web interface: a FastAPI backend that streams Server-Sent Events (SSE) and a React frontend built with Vite. Together they give you a live, browser-based research experience — submit a question, watch the agent plan and search in real time, then read the rendered markdown report without leaving your browser.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/IconDean/research-agent/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Starting the Application
You need two terminal windows running concurrently — one for the API server and one for the frontend dev server.Start the FastAPI backend
Open a terminal, navigate into the Uvicorn will reload automatically when server-side files change. The API listens on
research_agent directory, and start Uvicorn:http://127.0.0.1:8000.Start the React frontend
Open a second terminal, navigate into the Vite serves the UI at
frontend directory, and start Vite:http://localhost:5173 and proxies all /api/* requests to the backend automatically.Open the UI in your browser
Navigate to http://localhost:5173. If the API health indicator in the top-right corner shows green, the frontend has successfully reached the backend and you are ready to run research.
In development mode, Vite proxies every request to
/api/* directly to http://127.0.0.1:8000. This means the frontend and backend can run on different ports without CORS issues during development — you never need to change the API base URL in your code.Submitting a Research Question
The main input area is a textarea in the center of the page. Type your question, then start the research in one of three ways:- Type freely — enter any research question in the textarea.
- Use an example chip — click one of the three pre-set example questions to populate the textarea instantly:
- “What are the latest breakthroughs in fusion energy?”
- “How is CRISPR being used to treat genetic diseases in 2025?”
- “What are the main approaches to scalable quantum error correction?”
- Click Start — press the Start button below the textarea to begin.
Reading the Activity Log
Once a research run begins, a live activity log appears below the input area. Each line represents a progress event streamed from the backend via SSE, tagged with an event type so you can follow exactly what the agent is doing.| Event type | What it means | Display format |
|---|---|---|
start | Research has begun | Research started |
plan | Agent has created a research plan | Plan: <detail> |
search | Agent is issuing a web search | Searching: <detail> |
fetch | Agent is reading a webpage | Reading: <detail> |
thinking | Agent is reasoning or evaluating results | <detail> (shown directly) |
gaps | Agent identified gaps and is planning follow-up | Gaps: <detail> |
block | A URL was rejected by the credibility filter | Blocked: <detail> |
Cancelling a Research Run
If you want to stop an in-progress research run — for example because you phrased the question incorrectly — click the Cancel button that replaces the Start button during an active run. The frontend immediately aborts the in-flight SSE connection via anAbortController, clears the loading state, and leaves whatever activity log entries were already received in place.
You can then edit your question and start a new run straight away.
Reading the Rendered Report
When the agent finishes, the final report appears below the activity log as rendered markdown — headings, bullet points, bold text, tables, and inline links are all formatted byreact-markdown with remark-gfm. You do not need to switch to a separate view or download a file; the report renders directly on the page.
Inline citations and hyperlinks in the report are clickable and open in a new tab, letting you verify sources without leaving the interface.
API Health Indicator
A small status indicator in the UI checks the backend’s/api/health endpoint every 15 seconds. When the backend is reachable the indicator shows green; if the backend goes offline or returns an error it turns red. If you see a red indicator, confirm that Uvicorn is still running in Terminal 1 before submitting a question.