# Define

To define a research objective for MAIA, name the thing, the place, and the conditions, with numbers wherever you have them. The objective says what you want, and MAIA's agent works out how to get it.

Updated: 2026-09-30. Source: https://maia-analytics.com/docs/using-maia/define

## What an objective holds

An objective has three parts: the thing, the place, and the conditions. This one is from the solar run on the [home page](https://maia-analytics.com/#interactive-demo).

> **You ask:** Find large, single-tenant commercial buildings in Maricopa County with solar-ready roofs, verified ESG obligations, and available incentives

| Part | In this objective |
| --- | --- |
| The thing | Large, single-tenant commercial buildings |
| The place | Maricopa County |
| The conditions | Solar-ready roofs, verified ESG obligations, available incentives |

This is what that objective bought.

> **MAIA answers:** 10 sites qualify, representing 1.60 million square feet of roof and 5.59 MW of estimated solar capacity. All have verified ESG obligations and federal incentive eligibility; eight also sit in designated incentive areas.

A project covers one county, and you choose the county before you write. Inside the objective, the place can narrow further: a city, a corridor, a distance from something. Keep it inside the county. For a second county, start a second project and run the same skill there.

## Say what, not how

MAIA does not have a thesis about your market. You do. The more of it you put in the objective, the less MAIA has to assume.

Leave the method out. You do not name a dataset or a tool. MAIA chooses the route, and it reaches for records before research. How it chooses is on the [Main agent](https://maia-analytics.com/docs/capabilities/main-agent) page.

> **Note:** Some conditions are answered from records, and some take research. "Zoned industrial" is a query, and it is fast. "Verified ESG obligations" is researched one row at a time, and every row spends credits. MAIA asks before it researches more rows than your row limit. See [What uses credits](https://maia-analytics.com/docs/billing/usage).

## Vague and specific

| Vague | Specific | What changed |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Good roofs for solar | Which nonprofits in the county own a building with a flat roof over 15,000 square feet? | Names the owner type, the roof form, and a size threshold |
| Industrial land for outdoor storage | Find industrial parcels between three and eight acres with building coverage under 20 percent where outdoor storage is permitted by right. | Sets an acreage band, a coverage limit, and a zoning test |
| Sites near substations | Find parcels between two and seven acres within a quarter mile of a substation, zoned industrial. | Turns "near" into a distance |
| Apartment owners to call | Find every 2 to 50 unit building in these San Gabriel Valley cities built before 2000 and not sold in the last two years. | Defines the building, its age, and how long the owner has held it |

## Requirements filter, preferences rank

MAIA treats the two differently, so say which is which.

| You write | MAIA reads it as | Effect |
| --- | --- | --- |
| "Must be over three acres" | A requirement | Places that fail are set aside |
| "Closer to the highway is better" | A preference | Places are ranked. None is removed for it |

A blank is not a failure. When a requirement needs a value and a row has none, MAIA sets the row aside as unknown rather than as a fail, and it tells you how many rows it set aside. A row set aside is not deleted. You can bring it back.

## What MAIA knows before you ask

Knowledge is what MAIA already knows about you: your buy box, your service territory, the terms your team uses. With that in place, an objective can be short.

MAIA fills some of this in for you. At signup it researches the organization behind your email domain and saves what it finds as background you can edit. See [Knowledge](https://maia-analytics.com/docs/capabilities/knowledge).

## Five habits

- **Give numbers.** "Large" is an opinion. "Over 40,000 square feet" is a filter.
- **Say what rules a place out.** Owners you will not call, uses you cannot sit beside, flood zones you will not build in.
- **Say what must be certain.** MAIA reports what it could not confirm. Name the conditions you will not act on without proof.
- **One question per condition.** A condition that asks one thing becomes a column MAIA can check. A condition that asks three cannot be checked.
- **Change one thing and ask again.** The project keeps its state, so you never start over. See [Compound](https://maia-analytics.com/docs/using-maia/compound).

## In the app and over MCP

| Where | Where the objective goes |
| --- | --- |
| The web app | The box on a new project, then **Find**. In an existing project, the chat |
| MCP | The `request` of `create_project`, or the `message` of `send_message` |

Next: [Dispatch](https://maia-analytics.com/docs/using-maia/dispatch).