# How The Agents Index researches AI agents

> Source: The Agents Index — https://theagentsindex.com/blog/how-we-research-ai-agents (sourced research)
> By The Agents Index Editorial · Published 2026-07-12

_Our method for deciding what an AI agent actually does, what it costs, and whether it ships — sourced, quality-gated, and re-checked on a schedule._

The AI-agents space moves fast and markets itself hard. A directory is only useful if every entry is
something you can trust — so here is exactly how we build and maintain each listing.

## Every listing passes a quality gate

Before an agent can be published, its record must carry a minimum of structured, sourced facts — what it
is, what category it belongs in, whether it is open-source, whether it exposes an API, and its pricing
model. A record that cannot meet that bar simply does not publish. Thin, near-duplicate pages are
structurally impossible here. The full bar is published on our [methodology page](/methodology/).

## We separate stable facts from fast-moving ones

Some facts are stable (what an agent does, whether it is open-source). Others move constantly (exact
prices, model support). We record the stable facts plainly, describe pricing by its **model** rather than
pinning numbers that go stale, and mark every listing with the date it was last verified.

## We re-check on a schedule

Listings are re-researched over time, and changes land in the record — not silently. Each fact carries the
source it was verified from — an agent's license, for instance, is read from its own repository (like
[Aider's](https://github.com/Aider-AI/aider)), never from a marketing page — so you can check our work.

## We grow deliberately, not in a flood

We add genuine, researched agents one at a time. You will never see this index dump hundreds of
auto-generated pages online — real coverage, earned honestly, is the whole point. For the method applied
in practice, see our report on [terminal AI coding agents](/blog/terminal-ai-coding-agents-open-portable-locked/).

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Tags: methodology, ai-agents, research