knowledge

Build a research agent with citations in YAML

A multi-agent research bot that searches, verifies, and writes a cited synthesis.

webmemoryagent_spawn

The pattern

Coordinator-plus-specialists pattern, with a researcher that fetches sources, a fact-checker that verifies claims, and a writer that produces the final output. Citations are inline, sources are de-duplicated across domains, and the synthesis runs on a premium model while the grunt work stays cheap.

What good looks like

Every claim cites a source
No domain repeated more than 3 times
Synthesis under 600 words by default
Sub-25 turns end-to-end

Common pitfalls

Single-agent setup, can't verify itself
Letting the researcher hallucinate URLs
Premium model on exploration turns
No cap on web.fetch payload size, context blows up

The minimum YAML to ship this

app.yaml

1modules:2  web: { config: { search_backend: duckduckgo } }3  memory: { config: { working_memory: true } }45agents:6  - id: coordinator7    brain: { model: claude-sonnet-4-6 }8    workers: [researcher, fact_checker]9  - id: researcher10    modules: [{web: [search, fetch]}, memory]11    brain: { model: deepseek-chat, temperature: 0.2 }12  - id: fact_checker13    modules: [{web: [search]}]14    brain: { model: deepseek-chat, temperature: 0 }

Ship in 5 minutes

Install Digitorn and deploy this agent

# 1. install runtime
curl -sSL https://digitorn.ai/install | sh

# 2. save the YAML above to ~/.digitorn/apps/my-research-agent/app.yaml
mkdir -p ~/.digitorn/apps/my-research-agent
# paste the YAML into app.yaml

# 3. deploy
digitorn deploy my-research-agent

Read the deep dive

How we cut our coding agent's bill by 60% with model routing

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Engineering notes from the Digitorn team. No marketing, no launch announcements, no "10 prompts that will change your life". Just the things we write that we'd want to read.

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The minimum YAML to ship this

app.yaml

1modules:2  web: { config: { search_backend: duckduckgo } }3  memory: { config: { working_memory: true } }45agents:6  - id: coordinator7    brain: { model: claude-sonnet-4-6 }8    workers: [researcher, fact_checker]9  - id: researcher10    modules: [{web: [search, fetch]}, memory]11    brain: { model: deepseek-chat, temperature: 0.2 }12  - id: fact_checker13    modules: [{web: [search]}]14    brain: { model: deepseek-chat, temperature: 0 }

# 1. install runtime curl -sSL https://digitorn.ai/install | sh # 2. save the YAML above to ~/.digitorn/apps/my-research-agent/app.yaml mkdir -p ~/.digitorn/apps/my-research-agent # paste the YAML into app.yaml # 3. deploy digitorn deploy my-research-agent