Research tools
Gap Analysis guides.gap-analysis.hero.title_accent
Everything else here works with what you have. This one tells you what you're missing — the periods, places, and perspectives your research hasn't touched, before a reviewer points them out for you.
When to reach for it
When the research feels solid and you're about to commit — write the thesis, submit the proposal, lock the checklist. That confidence is exactly when the blind spots are most dangerous, because you can't see the frame you're inside. This is the tool that reads your sources for what isn't there: the decade you skipped, the region you assumed, the voice you didn't include.
Point it at your research
Select the body of materials you want examined — at least two, since a gap is a pattern across sources, not a property of one. Give it the real working set for a show or an essay, and it treats that set as a whole and asks what a complete version of it would also contain.
Selecting the research to analyse
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See what’s missing, across six axes
It reports gaps along the dimensions that matter to curatorial work: temporal (which periods are thin), geographic (which places are absent), demographic (whose experience is under-represented), methodological (which approaches you've leaned on and which you've ignored), perspective (which viewpoints are missing), and source type (whether you're over-reliant on one kind of material). Each is a specific, nameable absence — not a vague "consider broadening."
Gaps identified across the six coverage axes
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The demographic and perspective gaps are usually the uncomfortable ones — and usually the most worth acting on. Read those first.
Read each gap as an opportunity
Gaps come prioritised, and each is framed as a curatorial opportunity, not just a deficiency — the missing voice that could sharpen the show, the overlooked period that reframes the argument. A gap isn't only a hole to fill defensively; often it's the most interesting direction the work could take.
A gap framed as a curatorial opportunity
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Close the loop
Act on what you find: go source the missing material, add it to your library, and let the rest of your tools fold it in. A gap analysis is worth re-running once you've filled a few holes — it tells you whether you actually addressed the imbalance or just moved it somewhere else.
Turning a gap into a research to-do
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What it will — and won’t — do
It analyses the shape of what you've gathered and names where it's thin — a mirror held up to your own coverage. It can't tell you which gaps matter for your specific argument; some absences are deliberate and defensible, and deciding which is which is curatorial judgment. It surfaces the blind spots; you decide which ones to see by.
A gap analysis costs roughly 3,000 tokens — a few cents to catch an imbalance while it’s still cheap to fix.
What comes next
Related research tools
Connection Mapping
5 minDiscover relationships between your materials with interactive graph visualization
Research Synthesis
5 minGenerate structured data matrices across multiple sources — exportable to CSV/JSON
Directed Inquiry
4 minAsk a research question across chosen sources — get themes, quotes, gaps, and outside leads, all cited
See what your
research is missing.
Point it at your sources and find the gaps before your audience does. Curatorial is free to start.
Try it free