> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://helpcenter.paperguide.ai/llms.txt).
> Use it to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Reference Manager
Add papers, attach PDFs, find saved papers, search inside your PDFs, read papers, and organise folders from your AI assistant.
## Your library, in your chat
Once connected, your assistant can work with the papers in your Paperguide reference manager. Ask in plain language. The prompts below are examples.
If you belong to an organization with more than one library, your assistant asks you which library to use. A personal account has one library, so it is used automatically.
## Find papers you have saved
Ask for a paper by title or DOI. Your assistant finds it in your library and shows its details, including a BibTeX entry. It can also list your folders and the papers in them.
- "Do I have the Lazarus and Folkman paper on stress and coping in my library?"
- "Find 10.1155/2017/8416763 in my reference manager."
- "Show me the papers in my Climate folder."
## Search inside your PDFs
Ask a question about the papers you have saved. Your assistant searches the PDFs attached to your references and returns the relevant passages, with page numbers and the paper each one came from.
- "What do my saved papers say about sample sizes in sleep studies?"
- "Which of my papers mention transformer models? Quote the passages."
Only references with an attached PDF can be searched.
## Read a paper
Ask your assistant to read a paper and summarise it, review its methods, or write a report from it. It reads the full text of the attached PDF, with page numbers where available. Long papers are read in parts; your assistant fetches them one after another.
- "Read the Pizzino 2017 paper from my library and summarise the main findings."
- "Write a one-page critical review of this paper."
For a specific question about a paper, searching inside your PDFs is quicker and cheaper than reading the whole paper.
## Add papers and PDFs
Ask your assistant to save a paper. Give it a DOI, or a direct link to a PDF file.
- "Add 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2 to my library."
- "Save this paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.0473](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.0473)"
- "Add the second paper from that search to my Methods folder."
- "Add the NumPy paper, citation only, no PDF."
What happens:
- **With a DOI**, the paper's details are looked up and the reference is created straight away. The open-access PDF is fetched in the background and attached.
- **With a PDF link**, the file is downloaded first. Your assistant identifies the paper and creates the reference with the PDF attached. If it cannot identify the paper, it asks for the title and creates the reference from that.
- **Already in your library?** The paper is not added twice. Your assistant tells you which reference it is.
Fetching a PDF takes a few seconds to a minute. Your assistant checks on it and tells you when it is done, or why it could not be done.
To add a PDF to a paper you saved earlier, ask for that:
- "Attach the PDF to the Bahdanau 2014 paper."
- "Get the PDF for this reference from [https://example.org/paper.pdf](https://example.org/paper.pdf)"
* PDF size limits: 5 MB and 50 pages on Free, 50 MB and 500 pages on paid plans.
* Up to 5 PDFs are fetched at a time per account.
* A paper that already has a PDF is not replaced; replace PDFs in Paperguide.
* PDFs come from open-access sources. Some publishers block automated downloads; when that happens your assistant says so, and you can upload the file in Paperguide instead.
## Organise your library
Ask your assistant to create folders, rename them, and file papers into them. Changes appear in Paperguide straight away.
- "Create a folder called Methods and move my three statistics papers into it."
- "Make a sub-folder called Reviews inside Climate."
- "Add the Wener 2009 paper to the Mitigation folder as well, but keep it in Climate."
- "Rename the folder Misc to Background reading."
A paper can be in several folders. There are two ways to file it:
- **Move** takes the paper out of its other folders and puts it in the ones you name.
- **Add** puts the paper in one more folder and keeps it where it already is.
* Folder names must be unique in a library.
* In a shared library, your assistant can create sub-folders only inside folders you created yourself.
* Papers in no folder sit in **Unorganised**. To take a paper out of all folders, ask to move it to Unorganised.
* Deleting folders is done in Paperguide, not through your assistant.
## Check your usage
Ask "How many Paperguide credits do I have left?" Your assistant shows your plan, credits used and remaining this month, and the reset date.
Adding papers, finding, browsing, and organising them is free. Searching inside PDFs and reading papers use AI credits. See [Credits](/mcp/credits).