I Built a Free AI Research Paper Reader -Here's How

faith250 — Thu, 14 May 2026 17:39:36 +0000

I read a lot of research papers. And like most people, I found myself constantly:

Googling terminology mid-read
Losing track of what each section was arguing
Forgetting what I'd understood by the next day

So I built Research Notes — a free, open-source web app that sits alongside any PDF and helps you actually understand it.

What It Does
1)Highlight → Explain / Ask
2)Select any text in the PDF and a tooltip appears with two options: ✨ Explain (plain-English breakdown) or 💬 Ask (type your own question). The AI response includes the full paper as context — not just the isolated sentence.
3)Chat with the Paper
4)A chat panel lets you ask anything about the paper without highlighting first. "What's the key limitation?" "How does this compare to method X?" — the AI has read the whole paper so it can answer properly.
5)Image Attachment
You can a

Smart Export

📰 Paper + Notes PDF — landscape layout with the paper page on the left, your highlights drawn on it, and notes on the right
📄 Notes-only PDF
📝 Word (.docx)
🗒️ Markdown

What's Next

Support for multiple papers open simultaneously

Cross-paper search
Citation extraction

If you're a student, researcher, or just someone who reads dense documents, give it a try and let me know what you'd add.
💻 MIT licensed, PRs welcome: https://github.com/faith250/researchpaprereadingdoc

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Built by faith250_

DEV Community: faith250

I Built a Free AI Research Paper Reader -Here's How