Research AI Panel Overview

The Research AI Panel is a persistent sidebar assistant available on every authenticated page in AcaTrove. It gives you instant access to AI-powered research help without leaving your current workflow. Whether you are reviewing a publication, managing a project, or analyzing your dashboard metrics, the panel is always one click away.

How to Open the Panel

Look for the AI icon in the top navigation bar or sidebar. Clicking it slides the Research AI Panel open on the right side of your screen. Click the close button in the panel header to dismiss it. Your panel state is remembered as you navigate between pages.

Two Modes

The Research AI Panel operates in two distinct modes, selectable via tabs at the top of the panel:

Research Chat -- A conversational AI assistant that understands the context of whatever page you are on. It uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to pull relevant information from your documents and provide citation-backed answers. Research Chat supports multiple scopes (publication, project, lab, and more) so you can control exactly what context the AI draws from. See the Research Chat Mode article for details.

Dashboard Coach -- A focused mode for your dashboard that explains your current metrics, highlights trends, and suggests actions based on your data. It helps you interpret what your numbers mean and what to do next. See the Dashboard Coach Mode article for details.

Key Capabilities

• Context-aware conversations: The panel automatically detects which page you are on and adjusts its context. When you open it on a project page, it knows about that project's documents. When you open it on a publication, it focuses on that specific paper.
• Streaming responses: AI responses appear in real time as they are generated, so you do not have to wait for the full answer before reading.
• Source attribution: When the AI references your documents, it provides source citations you can verify.
• Voice input: Use the microphone button to dictate your questions instead of typing.
• Document editing: On pages with editable content (such as the Write workspace), the panel can propose and apply AI-generated edits directly to your document. See Document Editing for more.

Context and History

The Research AI Panel maintains a conversation history within each scope. When you switch scopes or navigate to a different context, the conversation resets to keep responses relevant. For multi-document scopes (project, lab, global), conversation history is persisted server-side, so you can return to earlier threads.

The panel provides up to 12,000 characters of page context and 6,000 characters of document excerpt to the AI, along with the last several turns of conversation history, ensuring responses are grounded in your actual data.

Tips

• Switch between Research Chat and Dashboard Coach using the tabs at the top of the panel -- each mode is optimized for different tasks.
• Use scope selection in Research Chat to narrow or broaden the AI's focus. Asking about "this project" versus "all my research" yields very different answers.
• The panel works on every authenticated page, including projects, labs, publications, grants, jobs, and the Write workspace.