Ask the library.
See where it answered from.
The assistant answers from ScholarGate method pages, names the ones it used, and tells you when your question falls outside what the library covers.
How does a cited answer work?
You ask in plain language. Before a word is written, your question runs against the method catalog twice: once as text, once as meaning. The two ranked lists are merged, and the pages at the top become the ground the answer stands on.
The answer then streams. The method pages it drew from gather in the Sources panel while it writes, and the reply closes with links to them, so checking a claim is one click rather than a search of your own.
- Retrieval is hybrid: full text search plus semantic similarity.
- Sources collect in a panel while the answer is still writing.
- Each answer ends with links to the method pages it used.
The library surface: your question, the answer, and the pages underneath it.
A librarian who tells you the shelf is empty is worth more than one who guesses well.
What happens when the library has no answer?
Retrieval runs, finds nothing close enough, and the assistant is told so explicitly before it starts writing. The reply then comes back as not covered rather than as a reference that merely looks right.
The same honesty applies to the surface itself. Signed out, out of membership, rate limited, or paused for maintenance: each state has its own sentence on screen instead of an answer that never arrives.
- A question with no match is answered as uncovered, not decorated.
- Nearby method pages are offered as adjacent reading when they exist.
- Every gate has a plain sentence: sign in, membership, rate limit, paused.
Which sources feed the library?
The assistant reads ScholarGate method pages and nothing else. Those pages are assembled from open scholarly records in OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar and Crossref, and each page keeps the trail back to what it was built from.
That boundary is the point. An answer can only be as good as the page underneath it, so every page carries its open records where anyone can look them up without taking our word for it.
- Answers are grounded in the method catalog, not in open web pages.
- Method pages carry the open records they were built from.
- Anyone can look up the same record without taking our word for it.
What else is in the room?
Small things you notice on the second day rather than the first.
Keep reading: how search finds the page, what a method page holds.
What does grounding actually change?
The same method question, answered two ways. The right column is not a rival product; it is what any assistant does when there is no library underneath it.
- Where the answer comes fromThe LibraryScholarGate method pagesAnswering from memoryWhatever the model recalls
- Sources you can openThe LibraryIncludedAnswering from memoryNot included
- When nothing in the catalog matchesThe LibrarySays the library does not cover itAnswering from memoryAnswers anyway
- Retrieval before the first wordThe LibraryFull text and semantic, mergedAnswering from memoryNot included
Before you ask the first question
Yes. Each answer runs real provider work on your behalf, so the assistant does not run anonymously. The rest of the library, including method pages and search, is readable without signing in.
No. The Library assistant belongs to a paid membership, and the app says so at the first turn rather than after you have typed a question. Where the plans stand today is on the pricing page.
Method pages. Retrieval runs over the ScholarGate catalog, so the links closing an answer are catalog pages, and each of those pages carries the open records behind it. The assistant does not search the open web for you.
You get told. The reply says the library does not cover it directly, offers nearby pages where they exist, and does not invent a reference to close the gap. That behavior is the reason the product exists.
Yes, to your account, so a thread is still there when you come back to it. Threads can be renamed, and any of them can be deleted.
Ask it something hard.
The assistant earns its place on the question you would otherwise spend an afternoon chasing.
Open the Library