Features
Everything you need to query your PDFs
A research assistant built for scientific rigour and data sovereignty — not a ChatGPT dressed up with PDFs.
Flagship features
Two research assistants, not just a chat
Beyond question-and-answer, RefChat automates two of a researcher's most time-consuming tasks — the literature review and the watch — end to end, with sources.
Deep Review — literature review
A structured, sourced review generated from your library — with a plan you approve before it runs.
- 1Plan. RefChat breaks your topic into 3–6 sub-questions. You edit, add or remove them before launching.
- 2Analysis. Each sub-question queries your whole library (local + web retrieval, reranking) and becomes a written section.
- 3Synthesis. A final structured document: introduction, cross-cutting synthesis, research gaps and references.
Ideal to kick off a state-of-the-art or a thesis chapter. Every claim cites its sources — always verifiable.
Scientific Watch — literature monitoring
A digest of the latest publications on a topic: "what has come out on X in the past few months?"
- 1Collect. RefChat queries the OpenAlex database over a date window and gathers the field's recent publications.
- 2Smart filtering. An AI judge drops the false positives — off-topic papers dragged in by keywords alone.
- 3Digest. A "what's new" summary with (Author, Year) citations of the notable work.
Stay current without wading through alerts. Where Deep Review favors relevance, the watch favors freshness.
Why RefChat
Six pillars that make the difference
What sets RefChat apart from a generic RAG or a consumer assistant.
Absolute confidentiality
In local mode, your documents never leave your machine. Secure European cloud mode available if you prefer to offload the computation.
Precise hybrid search
Multilingual semantic (E5-large) + BM25 keywords + cross-encoder reranking. More relevant than a basic RAG, and every answer cites its sources.
5 smart modes
RefChat automatically detects your intent: question, summary, reference list, search by author, or fact-check.
Advanced OCR & parsing
Scanned PDFs, old image-based reports, scientific structure: EasyOCR + GROBID extract text, metadata and references.
Automatic topics
BERTopic clustering to organise your library into coherent themes. Rename, merge or split them to fit your view.
Natively multilingual
Ask a question in English about a French article (or the other way round) — RefChat finds the relevant content whatever the language.
RefChat in pictures
The tool, for real
Every answer cites the article. Always verifiable.
Under the hood
5 query modes detected automatically
You write in natural language — RefChat infers what you really want.
| Mode | Trigger | Behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| Question | default | Narrative answer with sourced citations |
| Summary | "summarise", "synthesis" | Synthesis of one or several articles |
| References | "which publications" | List of relevant articles with explanations |
| Author | "papers by", "work of" | Search by author via OpenAlex |
| Fact-check | "verify", "is this correct" | Checking claims against your bibliography |
Who it's for
Built for demanding environments
Where confidentiality and rigour come first.
R&D and academic research
State of the art, cross-referencing hundreds of articles. Speed up your literature reviews.
Technology watch
Sector reports, patents, publications. Ask strategic questions with no risk of leaks.
Industrial knowledge capture
Recover information buried in decades of internal reports (OCR + RAG).
Consultancies and expert work
For organisations handling sensitive documents: legal, medical, geoscience.
Try it on your own bibliography
30-minute live demo, or a trial on a sample of your PDFs, under NDA if needed.
Request a demo