Chat with PDF
Chat with your PDFs using AI with page-level citations and a built-in PDF viewer.
What is Chat with PDF?
Chat with PDF lets you ask questions about any PDF and get answers grounded in the document's full text. The AI reads the entire paper, not just snippets, so follow-up questions stay precise and citations point to exact pages and sentences. A built-in PDF viewer sits alongside the chat so you can read the source while you ask questions.
Use it when you want to:
- Get structured summaries of long or dense papers
- Pull key claims with supporting evidence and exact quotes
- Compare methods or results across multiple PDFs in one conversation
- Find gaps, open questions, and limitations
Getting started
You can start a Chat with PDF session in three ways: upload a PDF from your device, pick a paper from your Reference Manager, or paste a URL, DOI, or arXiv link.
Add your PDFs
Choose one of three options:
- Upload: drag and drop or browse for PDF files on your device.
- Reference Manager: select papers already in your Reference Manager library.
- URL/DOI/arXiv: paste a direct PDF link, DOI, or arXiv ID. Paperguide retrieves and indexes the file.
Wait for indexing
Each PDF is processed asynchronously. You will see a progress indicator per file, and the chat becomes available once indexing completes. Indexing includes full-text extraction and vectorization so the AI can search and cite specific passages.
Ask your first question
Start with a concrete task, such as Give me a structured summary of this paper or What are the main claims and where are they supported? Use follow-ups like Where does it say that? to get direct quotes.
You can upload up to 5 PDFs on the Free plan. Paid plans support unlimited uploads.
Citations and sources
Every answer includes inline citations that link directly to the source passage in the PDF.
- Page and sentence references: each citation shows the paper title and page number. Hover over a citation to preview the cited sentence without leaving the chat.
- Click to navigate: click any citation to jump to that page in the built-in PDF viewer.
- Confidence indicators: citations include a confidence score so you can quickly assess how strongly the source supports the claim.
The PDF viewer opens alongside the chat panel. Read the paper, check the context around a citation, and return to the conversation without switching tabs.
Multi-PDF chat
When you have multiple PDFs in a session, you can reference specific papers using the @paper mention. Type @ and select a paper from the list — the AI will focus its answer on that document.
This is useful when you want to:
- Compare methods or results across specific papers
- Ask
How does @Paper A differ from @Paper B in their experimental setup? - Direct the AI to a particular source for a follow-up question
Sharing
Share a Chat with PDF session with a colleague by copying the shareable link. The recipient can view the full conversation, including questions, answers, and citations, without needing a Paperguide account.
Tips for better results
- Keep synthesis sets focused: for deep comparison or synthesis, results are usually better with around 10 papers in a single chat rather than the maximum.
- Ask specific, grounded questions: prefer prompts like
What are the main findings in section 4, and how do they relate to figure 2?overExplain this paper. - Use follow-ups for precision: after a broad summary, narrow down with follow-ups like
Show me only the limitations that relate to sample sizeorWhere exactly in the results does the paper make this claim? - Request evidence explicitly: when you need quotes, ask for them directly. The AI will return exact passages with page references.