Chat with your library

Chat sits beside your document. You ask questions about the PDFs in your library and the document you are writing, and each answer cites the passages it used. On Plus, Chat can also search the web and read an image you attach.

Open Chat

1. Open a document.
2. Press Side panel at the top right, then the Chat tab, or choose Open Chat in the command palette. See The editor.

Before your first question, verify your email and press Got it on the note about Papero's AI. You can ask about your document before your library holds any PDF. An empty conversation suggests questions, such as Summarise this section.

Ask a question

1. Type in the field, Ask, @ to add a paper, / for actions.
2. Press Enter or Send. Shift+Enter starts a new line.
3. The answer appears as Papero writes it. Press Stop to stop it.

Chat remembers the conversation, so you can ask a follow-up. Type / to run an action or use a saved prompt; see Saved prompts.

Choose what Chat reads

The bar above the field shows Context: and your document's title: Chat reads its text, tables and code blocks. Press the × beside the title to leave the document out, and Add current document to put it back.

If you pick no papers, Chat looks through your PDFs, starting with the ones your document cites when it is in the context. To ask about particular papers, type @ and an author's name, a year or a word from the title, or press +, Add a paper. The papers you picked show as a small stack beside the field; press it to see Sources for this question and remove one. Chat then reads only those. On Plus the list also offers papers without a PDF that have an abstract, marked abstract only.

To add a PDF from the chat, press the paperclip and choose a file. Papero adds it to your library and to your question, one file at a time. See Upload PDFs.

Search the web (Plus)

Press Web beside the paperclip: Also search the web when your sources have no answer. It stays on for the rest of the conversation; a new or reopened conversation starts with it off.

When an answer used the web, the pages it drew on are listed under it as Web sources, with their site and title, and open in a new tab. A statement from the web links to its page instead of citing a paper.

There is a daily limit on web questions, and the day follows UTC. When you reach it, your question goes back in the field: turn off Web to keep asking, or try again tomorrow. On Free, Web carries a Plus tag and opens the plans.

Attach an image (Plus)

On Plus the paperclip is Upload a PDF or attach an image. Choose an image, or paste one into the field. A question takes one image: Remove the image takes it off, and Send waits until it has uploaded. Chat can describe the image and answer from it.

Papero takes PNG, JPEG, WebP and GIF files and prepares them as it does the images in your documents; see Tables, figures and images. On Free, an image gets the note Images in chat are part of Plus.

Read and use an answer

Each source in an answer shows as a label, such as Lee, 2020. Press the label to cite that paper at your cursor, with its page. The small button after it, such as p. 4, opens the PDF reader at the passage the answer used; see The PDF reader. A label followed by abstract used the paper's abstract.

With your document in the context, Chat can answer from the document alone. When nothing answers the question, Chat says so, for example Not found in your document or your PDFs. Try rephrasing, or add a PDF. With Web on, it tries the web before saying so.

Under a finished answer, Insert into document puts it at your cursor with its sources as real citations, and Copy copies it as plain text. A web link goes in as its words, without the address. Good answer and Bad answer rate it.

Conversations

Each document keeps its own conversations. Conversations in the Chat header opens or deletes an earlier one, and New conversation starts an empty one. When a conversation gets too long, Chat says This conversation is full. Start a new one to keep asking.

Your allowance and your data

Each answer counts as one chat answer, and how many you have left shows beside Send. An answer that found nothing to answer from does not count. Web searches and images make an answer use more of your monthly fair-use limit. See Your AI allowance.

To answer, Papero sends OpenAI your question, the earlier messages, passages of your PDFs and your document's text. With Web on, OpenAI's web search also runs searches for the answer, and an image goes to OpenAI with its own question only. Your conversations, the web pages their answers cite and your images are stored privately with your account. For what is sent and how long it is kept, see Privacy and your data and the Privacy Policy.

Next: save the questions you ask often.