This guide gets you from sign-up to your first cited AI answer.
Create your account
Go to anara.com and sign up with Google, Apple, Microsoft or your email address. Anara creates a workspace for you automatically.
Upload your first document
On the Home page, click Upload in the Quick Actions section. You can also drag a file anywhere into the Anara window.
Anara supports PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint, Excel, Markdown, plain text, EPUB, and more. After uploading, Anara extracts metadata (authors, DOI, publication date) and generates an AI summary in the background.
Tip: Already using Zotero or Mendeley? You can import your existing reference library to Anara. See Importing from Zotero and Importing from Mendeley. Requires a Plus plan or higher.
Ask a question about your document
Click on your uploaded file to open it. In the PDF viewer, find the Ask tab in the right sidebar. This is the AI chat panel for that document.
Type a question and press Enter. Each claim in the response includes a numbered citation. Click any citation to jump to the exact passage in the PDF it came from.
Chat with your whole library
To search across multiple documents at once, go to Home and click Chat with folder. Select a folder and the AI searches across all documents in it to answer your questions.
This is where Anara's scale becomes clear: asking a question across 20 papers or 200 works the same way, and every answer still cites its sources.
Create a note
Click the Create button in the left sidebar and select Note. The note editor opens with AI chat available in a sidebar. Write, ask questions, and insert citations from your library without switching tabs.
When you're ready to export, open the note's menu and choose Export. Supported formats: PDF, Word, HTML, and LaTeX.
If something isn't working
File not processing? Check that your file is a supported format. See What file types does Anara support?
AI not responding? Try refreshing the page. If the issue persists, see Troubleshooting common errors.
Upload limit reached? Free accounts have daily upload limits. See Understanding usage limits or consider upgrading.