§ Recipe

Academic research helper.

Academic research is a throughput problem. You read 40 papers to cite 10. These tools don't do the thinking for you — they remove the mechanical overhead so you can spend more time on the part that matters.

IndieFree
  1. Literature search

    01

    Elicit

    AI research assistant for literature search, paper screening, extraction, and synthesis.

    Research & Search
    Freemium
    4.3

    Semantic search across 200M papers. Not just keyword matching — asks 'what's the effect of X on Y' and returns studies that actually answer, with data extracted into tables.

  2. Claim verification

    02

    Consensus

    AI research search engine for evidence-backed answers from scientific papers.

    Research & Search
    Freemium
    4.4

    When a paper makes a strong claim, Consensus shows you the meta-picture: how many studies agree, disagree, and with what effect sizes. It's the spot-check you need before citing.

  3. Paper synthesis

    03

    NotebookLM

    Google's source-grounded notebook for research, reports, audio overviews, and study aids.

    Research & Search
    Freemium
    4.4

    Upload 20 PDFs, ask synthesis questions across all of them at once. Its audio overviews are genuinely useful for finding your way into an unfamiliar field.

  4. Citation graph

    04

    Connected Papers

    Visual graph of related research papers — discover connections between academic works.

    Research & Search
    Freemium
    4.0

    Visualize the paper's intellectual lineage. You find the actual load-bearing citations — not just the ones the paper itself cites — and the adjacent work it doesn't.

  5. Writing assistance

    05

    Claude

    Anthropic's long-context assistant for writing, coding, analysis, and careful reasoning.

    Chatbots & Assistants
    Freemium
    4.8

    Long context handles paste-the-whole-draft edits. Better than generic AI writers because you can say 'preserve my voice, tighten the argument' and it actually will.

  6. Reference management

    06

    Semantic Scholar

    Free AI-powered academic search engine and research graph from Semantic Scholar.

    Research & Search
    Free
    4.3

    The canonical open academic graph. Export citations, track what cites your work, find related papers algorithmically. Free, and the bedrock of several other tools above.