What Otto does

For Mac (Apple silicon and Intel) and Windows 10 and 11. Free during early access.

Otto is where research gets done: finding the literature, reading it, keeping what matters and turning it into work you can stand behind. Its assistant takes on the managing, so more of your time goes on thinking. Otto works beside the reference manager you already use, and keeps your papers on your own computer.

Find papers

One search, many sources
OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Crossref, PubMed, Europe PMC, arXiv, bioRxiv and medRxiv, CORE, DOAJ, Zenodo, DataCite, OpenAIRE, OpenReview and more, searched together. The same paper found in several places becomes one result.
Search the way you think
A topic, a question, a claim, a title, a DOI or an arXiv or PubMed id: Otto works out which, and finds the paper you mean or the papers that bear on it. Investigate deeper carries the same search further instead of starting again.
Why each result
One line on why a paper matches this search, and whether it is already in your library or project.
A map of the results
The same papers drawn as a map: who cites whom, and which papers are most alike. Walk outwards from one paper to its sources, the work that built on it and its nearest neighbours.
Paper trail
A paper's other versions (preprint, published, corrected) and the work that carries it on, with retraction and correction notices shown where they exist.
Suggestions with reasons
Each project gets its own suggestions, drawn from what its papers cite and what cites them, and each says why it was suggested.
Reminders
Follow an author or a topic and hear when new work appears.
Full text, lawfully
Otto finds open copies from publishers, repositories and preprint servers. For the rest, open the paper in Otto's own browser through your library's access, and the PDF you download is attached by itself. Nothing goes round a paywall.

Read

A reading view, or the PDF
The reading view lays a paper out as clean text with its figures, tables and equations, at the type and width you like. The original PDF is a click away and keeps your place.
Highlights and comments
In either view, in colour, with tags and comments. They keep their place when you switch views.
Peek
Rest on “Figure 3”, an equation number or a citation to see it without leaving your place.
Citations that open
In-text citations link to the papers they name: read, quick-look, queue or add them.
Two papers side by side
Compare mode puts two papers next to each other, each with its own place and notes.
A reading queue
Line papers up and read through them; Otto remembers where you stopped in each.
Read aloud
A natural voice reads the paper, marking each word as it goes.
A pen
Draw on pages and figures. Ask Otto about what you circled.
Take a paper with you
Save it as a PDF with your highlights as real annotations, as Markdown, or as the reading view.

Keep what matters

Projects, folders and tags
A project holds its papers, an inbox for new ones, notes, tasks and people. Folders and tags sort them your way.
Questions and evidence
Write a project's research questions, and link highlights to them as evidence for or against. See, question by question, what you have and what is missing.
Notes with their sources
Notes in which any sentence can carry its source. A source opens the exact passage in the paper.
Tables from papers
Rows of papers, columns of your questions, each cell filled with what the paper reports and the words it says it in. A cell Otto could not confirm says so.
Trace a claim
Follow a claim to the passages and cited works behind it.
Datasets beside papers
Keep a project's data with it, from your computer or a public repository.

Run a project

A research plan
Give a project its aim and Otto drafts the steps ahead: what is known, what is still missing, each point marked by where it came from, and the papers each step turns on. Hand a step to Otto or tick it off yourself.
Tasks, deadlines and decisions
A planner with owners, deadlines and milestones, and a record of what was decided and why.
What the project is telling you
Papers your project keeps citing that you have not opened, topics with nothing read yet, and parts of the field left thin.
A map of the project
Its papers by year and topic, joined by what they cite.

Otto, the assistant

It acts, then shows what it did
Ask in plain words: Otto searches, saves, sorts, queues, highlights, files, writes notes and builds tables. Every change is listed, and can be undone.
It asks before it matters
Long jobs start with a plan you can edit. Nothing is deleted without asking.
Answers you can check
When Otto says what a paper says, it cites the passage. Each citation is checked against what Otto actually read, and labelled: full text, abstract only, or not verified.
It reads, it doesn't conclude for you
Otto finds, fetches, compares and keeps track. Disagreements are shown as the passages side by side, not settled for you.
It remembers how you work
Your citation style, units, decimal places and figure colours, learnt from what you choose again and again. See and change everything it remembers.
Your choice of model
Cloud models from Anthropic and OpenAI, with a monthly allowance included, or a model that runs on your own computer through Ollama or LM Studio.
Speak to it
Voice input, transcribed on your computer.

Work together

Shared projects
Papers, highlights, notes, tasks and a shared reading queue, kept in step between everyone in the project. PDFs are never sent: each person keeps their own copy.
Notes where your team writes
A project’s notes stay in step with its Confluence pages, both ways or read only, and with a Google Doc. Any note opens in Overleaf, references included.
Owners, editors and viewers
Give each person the access they need.
Yours stays yours
Private comments and notes are never shared, and your reading progress is your own.
See who is here
Who has which paper open, and their cursor as they work.
Send one thing
Send a paper, a note or a highlight to someone you work with.
Meet from the project
Start a Microsoft Teams or Zoom call from the project.

Bring it in, take it out

Import
From Zotero (directly or from a file), Mendeley, EndNote and Paperpile libraries, BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON, PubMed, Web of Science, CSV, and folders of PDFs, with the highlights already in them.
Export
BibTeX (kept up to date as your library changes), RIS, EndNote, CSL-JSON, PubMed, CSV and Excel.
Cite
APA 7, Harvard, IEEE, MLA, Chicago and Vancouver.
Google Docs
Send a note to Google Docs with its citations.

Leaving is as easy as arriving: everything you put in comes back out in a standard format.

Reproduce results

For a growing set of reviewed methods, Otto re-runs a paper's own code on your computer, sealed off from the network, and compares what it makes with the published figures and numbers: what matched, what differs, and why. Run the same method on your own data, and keep every result with a record of how it was made.

On your computer

No account needed
An account is only for sharing projects and the cloud assistant.
Your library stays here
Papers, PDFs, highlights and notes live on your computer, with a backup every day. A copy to your own Google Drive is optional.
In your language
The app in 16 languages.

More in Security and privacy.

What we are working on

We want Otto to take on more of the work around research, and to be measured in the open while it does:

Request an invitation