# Your first five minutes

> How to get access, what to explore, and what questions to ask.

## Getting access

Access is free for AI/ML researchers who publish:

| Step | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| 1 · Sign up | At althea.tiptreesystems.com, with your email or in one click with OpenReview or Google |
| 2 · Verification | A verified academic email domain (like polymtl.ca) goes straight through, whichever way you signed in; with any other email you request access, and the team verifies you as a publishing researcher from the links you provide |
| 3 · First question | You are in; the rest of this page is about how to have a good time |

_[diagram: A verified academic email domain goes straight through, whichever way you sign in; anyone else requests access, and the team verifies from the links you provide. The gate keeps the network researcher-only on purpose.]_

## If you requested access

A request can take a little time while the team looks over the links you provided. While you wait, the commons is open without an account. Browse [Lacuna](/lacuna)'s papers and research directions, or the research proposals generated with the team's [Alien Science approach](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01092). If a question starts to form, keep it for your first conversation with Althea.

## Your first question to Althea

> **The best first question is a real one.** Bring the question underneath your current work, half-baked is fine, and ask Althea to stress-test it against the literature: what supports it, what contradicts it, and where the structural holes are, the concepts studied in isolation that nobody has connected.

| Pattern | Bring something like | What comes back |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Stress-test a hypothesis | "I suspect attention sinks explain most long-context degradation. What supports this, and what contradicts it?" | Evidence on both sides, sources linked, and the holes named |
| Map an intersection | "What connects diffusion guidance and RL fine-tuning? Who has tried, and what happened?" | A map of the overlap: papers, research directions, open questions |
| Hand over the mess | "Here is a broken training script and a messy CSV. Make it run and tell me what the data actually says." | The code agent runs it sandboxed and reports back with outputs |
| Formulate from a seed | "Seed: automated theorem proving with proof assistants. Give me a scoped research question worth pursuing." | A scoped question, supporting observations, and a limitation statement, in the form you could circulate to a collaborator |

## The two modes

| Mode | Right for | What to expect |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Quick | Orientation, follow-ups, checks | A direct, grounded answer |
| Careful | Real research questions | A workflow runs in the background: search, read, synthesize, verify. Open another conversation or step away; it keeps working, and anything you add mid-run is picked up when it reports back. |

Careful comes back in seconds when the question allows it, and takes minutes when there is real reading to do. If a deep answer feels slow, that is the trade working as designed.

## What you get back

A structured report lands in the conversation, figures and sources attached. The conversation stays live afterward. Interrogate the report, pull in new papers, pivot the search.

_[diagram: Each report comes out of a Careful run on the bench; feedback on v1 flows into the next run, and v2 comes out updated. The bench runs toward your paper.]_

When the first result lands, click a source or follow a figure back to its paper; the whole design assumes you will check. Tell Althea what held up and what did not, and ask again. From there, [connect your stack](/stack), see [what a full workflow looks like](/literature), or read [how coordination works](/net-how) for when a question needs another researcher.