Literature search, data analysis, academic writing, and a cross-project paper memory — all powered by AI, all in one desktop app. Bring your ChatGPT Pro or Claude Max subscription, or an API key. Built for scientists and academics.
Tools like Claude Cowork are great at general knowledge work — file management, document drafting, data extraction. Research Copilot goes deeper. It's built for the academic research lifecycle.
Think of it this way: Claude Cowork is a smart office assistant. Research Copilot is a lab partner who knows how to search literature, run stats, write papers, and apply for grants.
One app that handles the entire research workflow — from literature discovery to paper writing.
A background agent that turns every paper you touch into a local, concept-organized knowledge base shared across all your projects. Recall and cite earlier work without re-feeding context.
Search Semantic Scholar, arXiv, OpenAlex, and DBLP simultaneously. Papers are scored, deduplicated, and organized automatically.
AI generates and runs Python scripts with matplotlib and seaborn. Get publication-quality figures and statistical analysis through natural language.
Write LaTeX manuscripts, grant proposals, and conference papers with AI that understands academic conventions and citation styles.
Bring your ChatGPT Pro or Claude Max subscription via OAuth — no API key, no metered bill. Auto-prefers sub over API when both are configured.
Read, write, and edit files. Run bash commands. Full coding agent capabilities powered by pi-mono — no terminal switching needed.
Convert PDF, DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX to Markdown. Attach files directly in chat — images, CSVs, PDFs all handled natively.
13 builtin skills for writing, visualization, and analysis. Add your own project-specific skills as simple Markdown files.
Skills are lazy-loaded knowledge modules that give the AI domain expertise. They're just Markdown files — easy to read, easy to customize, easy to share.
Search across multiple academic databases. Papers are automatically scored for relevance, deduplicated, and organized in a searchable table.
A background agent turns every paper you touch into a local, concept-organized knowledge base shared across all your projects. When you start a new project, the AI already remembers what you read last month — no re-feeding context.
wiki_search, wiki_get, wiki_coverage. Modern stack, proven tools. Research Copilot stands on the shoulders of great open-source projects.
Three steps to your AI-powered research workflow.
Update to latest: npm update -g research-copilot
Open the model selector and sign in with ChatGPT Pro or Claude Max via OAuth. No API key needed, no metered bill. Or paste a key into the unified settings panel (Cmd+.):
Priority when multiple are configured: ChatGPT sub → Claude sub → OpenAI API → Anthropic API.
Pick any folder as your workspace. Research Copilot stores notes, papers, and data in a .research-pilot directory inside it.
Prefer to build from source?