Research Engine explained
How Nova analyses your market, competitors, and audience to build a solid foundation for your SaaS blueprint.
What the Research Engine does
The Research Engine is the first stage of the generation pipeline. It takes your project wizard context and generates a structured market research document covering:
- Market size and opportunity assessment
- Primary and secondary target audience profiles
- Competitive landscape — who the main players are and what they do well or poorly
- Underserved pain points your product can address
- Positioning recommendations
- Key success factors for your SaaS category
This output feeds directly into the Analysis stage, which informs your Architecture, Feature Specs, and Prompt Pack.
How to run it
Option 1 — Generate All
Click Generate All in the sidebar. Research runs as the first stage of the full pipeline automatically.
Option 2 — Run individually
Navigate to Research in the sidebar. Click the Generate Research button. The Research document populates with full sections once complete.
You can regenerate Research at any time after updating your wizard context. Downstream stages (Architecture, Features) are not automatically regenerated — trigger them manually after updating Research.
Improving research quality
- Name real competitors in the wizard — generic prompts produce generic competitor analysis
- Specify your geographic focus (India, US, global) — affects market sizing
- Add your target user's job title and company size — audience profiles become much more specific
- Mention any regulatory constraints (healthcare, fintech) — competition and positioning changes significantly
Reading the research output
The Research document is split into collapsible sections. At the top you'll see a confidence meter — this reflects how much context Nova had to work with. If it's low, return to the wizard and add more detail.