{"id":608,"slug":"research-first-cadence-recommendation-2026","title":"Reference: research-first cadence by operation type — 1 piece/month to bimonthly print","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["agency-methodology","editorial-discipline"],"reference_body":"**Realistic cadence for research-first content operations, by operator profile (2026):**\n\n| Operation type | Realistic cadence | Reference point |\n|---|---|---|\n| Solo, primary focus elsewhere | 1 piece/month | **Bits about Money** (Patrick McKenzie self-describes as \"roughly monthly\") |\n| Solo, primary work | 1 piece/week | **Construction Physics** (Brian Potter's stated target: *\"every, every week or so\"*) |\n| Small team (2-4 people) | 1 deep piece/week + ongoing notes | **Anthropic Science blog** (Features + Workflows + Field Notes) |\n| Quarterly long-form house | 4-6 major pieces/year | **Works in Progress** (shifting to bimonthly print) |\n\n**For a small service business operating research-first, the realistic answer is one public article every 2-4 weeks, with foundation-research notes drafted continuously in the background.**\n\n**The trap:** benchmarking against high-volume content marketing (HubSpot's 16+ posts/month threshold) and concluding research-first \"doesn't work.\" It works on a different axis: **per-piece authority, AI citation likelihood, and conversion among readers who already trust the category.**\n\n**The right metric is not posts per month.** It is whether the next piece you write **makes the previous one more valuable**, or just adds another file to the same folder.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"research-first-named-practitioners-2026","title":"Reference: 8 named exemplars of research-first/docs-as-product methodology — Stripe, Twilio, Anthropic, Gwern, Matuschak, Appleton, BAM, Construction Physics","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"newton-platformer-retreat-from-daily-april-2026","title":"Casey Newton / Platformer retreat from daily cadence (April 2026): \"More scoops, less aggregation and analysis\" — AI commoditizes daily synthesis","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-research-before-pages","title":"Research brief: Research Before Pages — methodology for KB-backed websites (piece 14 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T20:46:33.400Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T20:46:33.400Z"}