Workflows

With Workflows, Papero researches a topic in the background and writes a first draft with cited papers. You can leave the page while it runs. The draft opens as a new document that you edit like any other. Every citation in it is a paper Papero found, never an invented reference.

There are two kinds:

• Literature review: a cited overview of what is known about a topic, section by section.
• Research gap analysis: where the research stops, with open questions, thin evidence and what is missing.

Start a run

1. Press New in the sidebar and choose Draft a cited literature review or Find research gaps. The command palette has the same two items, and the Workflows page has a card for each with Set up.
2. Describe your Topic. Specific topics give better results, and the hint under the field tells you when yours is specific enough.
3. Pick a Depth, where to Look in, and any Filters. Each is explained below.
4. Check the Citation style and the Document language. They start from your most recently opened document. A Workflow writes only in the styles this list offers, such as APA 7. If that document uses another style, the setup starts on APA 7; once the run is done, you can switch the new document to any style.
5. Press Run.

The dialog and the Workflows page show how many runs you have left. You can have one run going at a time. If one is still going, Papero says You already have a run going.

Depth

• Low: under a minute. It uses the least of your monthly fair-use limit.
• Medium: about 1 to 2 minutes, and up to about twice as much of that limit as Low.
• Max: about 2 to 4 minutes, and about two to three times as much as Low.

A deeper run searches with more queries, reads more papers and writes more sections, at greater length. On Free you can run Low only; Medium and Max carry a Plus tag and open the plans.

Where Papero looks

• Papers: Papero writes search queries from your topic and searches scholarly records in OpenAlex, as Find papers does. See Find papers.
• My library: your own sources that match the topic, using their abstracts and the best passages of their PDFs. If you have collections, a Collection list lets you pick one, or keep Whole library. A collection is read whole.
• Both: your library first, then a search. A paper you already have stays your own source.

Retracted papers are always left out.

Filters

• Published: Any year, Last 5 years (with the year it starts from), or Custom range with From and To. It applies to the papers a search finds and to your library. Sources in your library with no year are kept.
• Cited by, Journal impact and Preprints work as they do in Cite, but only on the papers a search finds, never on your own sources. With Journal impact on, a paper whose journal has no figure is left out too. See Journal impact filter.

If too few papers match, the run ends with No papers matched your filters. Try wider filters or another topic.

While it runs

The progress view shows each step, such as Planning the search, Choosing the best papers, Planning the outline and Finishing the document, with the papers found and the sections written so far. You can leave: You can leave this page. The run continues in the background.

When a run ends, Papero tells you, for example Your Workflow on "sleep and memory" has finished., with Open. Workflows in the account menu, at the foot of the sidebar, shows how many finished runs you have not opened yet, and opens the Workflows page.

Recent runs on the Workflows page lists your runs with their status: Queued, Running, Done, Partial, Failed or Cancelled. Press See progress on a run that is going, or Open on one that has ended.

To stop a run, press Cancel run, then Yes, cancel run. Sections already written are kept in your document.

The draft

The run writes into a new document named after your topic, in the language and citation style you chose. While the run writes, the document is read-only. When it is done, you get each section's heading and its cited text, and every paper the draft cites is added to your library.

A run that ends as Partial keeps the sections it wrote. That happens when some sections could not be written, when a spending limit was reached, or when AI was paused.

To work on the draft, see Draft a section and Cite as you write.

Your allowance

A run counts as one Workflow run when you start it. Its AI work also counts toward the monthly fair-use limit, more at a deeper depth, and each search it makes counts as a paper search. If you have no paper searches left, the run skips the searches it cannot make and may find fewer papers.

You get the run back if you cancel it while it is still waiting to start, or if it ends without writing a section. A run you cancel after it started still counts.

On Free you get a small number of runs in total, at Low depth. On Plus, runs reset each month and every depth is open. See Your AI allowance and pricing. To see a finished run, read the features page on papero.ai.

Next: your AI allowance.