Research Mode (Cafes)

Overview

Research Mode ("Cafes") is a standalone research feature where you create independent research workspaces, gather material from multiple sources, and curate findings for use in your Scribes. Available to all tiers — Free users can access Research Cafes using their token balance.

Getting Started

1. Click Research in the navigation bar
2. Click + New Cafe to create a research workspace
3. Name your Cafe (e.g., "Climate Research", "AI Startups")
4. Start searching and gathering research

Cafe Settings (Citation Style, Filters, Reference Count, and More)

Each Cafe has a Settings panel, accessible via the gear icon in the Cafe toolbar. Settings are saved per Cafe and take effect on all subsequent searches in that workspace.

Citation Style

Choose from five citation formats: APA 7 (default), APA 6, MLA 9, Chicago Notes-Bibliography, and Harvard Cite Them Right 2025. Enriched source cards in the Cafe show a formatted citation in the style you pick. The style affects how references appear in the card — authors, title, journal, volume, issue, pages, DOI.

Source Tier Filter

Filter results to show only sources from specific tiers: Academic Journal/Paper, Government Source, News Article, Web Article, Social Post, or Wiki Summary. Leave the filter empty (default) to see all tiers. Enable Academic Sources Only as a quick toggle to restrict results to academic-tier sources.

Reference Count

Set how many sources each search returns. Options: Auto (default, resolves to 7), or a fixed count from 1 to 25. Your subscription tier caps the maximum:

If you select a count above your tier ceiling, it is silently clamped — no error message.

Enriched Sources Only

When on, search routes hide sources where metadata enrichment returned only a bare URL (no title, author, or date). Useful when you need citable academic sources rather than raw web results.

Web Search

Toggle web search on or off for this Cafe. When off, the Web search mode disappears from the search bar — only Academic search and identifier paste remain available. Default is on.

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Identifier Paste (Pro and Creator)

Instead of searching, you can paste a known identifier directly into the identifier input (shown alongside the search bar). CoffeeScribe auto-detects the type as you type and shows a pill:

The Enrich button is disabled if the type is unrecognised. On submission, the enrichment pipeline resolves the identifier against the appropriate database (Crossref, OpenAlex, PubMed, Open Library, Google Books, or the Crossref Journals API for ISSNs) and adds an enriched source card to your Cafe.

After the metadata enrichment returns, CoffeeScribe automatically attempts to scrape the full article body from the source URL in the background. This is best-effort:

• Open-access articles — full readable body is usually retrieved and stored in the source card.
• Paywalled publishers (Nature, Science, Elsevier, etc.) — the scrape is blocked by a challenge page; the abstract from the enrichment metadata is kept as the content.
• Either way, the 200 response arrives immediately — the body scrape happens in the background and doesn't slow down the identifier flow.

Identifier paste is Pro and Creator only — Free users see a greyed input with an upgrade prompt. Cost: a small token charge applies when OpenAlex is reached during enrichment (other resolvers such as Crossref, PubMed, arXiv, Open Library, and Google Books are platform-absorbed at no per-use cost to you). The background body scrape uses the same URL-scrape path as the URL Scraping feature and is charged at the same rate.

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Source Cards — Enrichment Surface

Every source card in the Cafe now shows enrichment metadata when available:

Metadata Health Badge

A small pill in the card header indicates how complete the enrichment is:

• Full (green) — author, year, journal/publisher, volume, issue, pages, and DOI all present
• Partial (amber) — some fields present; others missing
• URL only (grey) — no structured metadata; bare URL or failed enrichment

Source Tier Label

A small pill shows the source's classified tier: Academic Journal/Paper, Government Source, News Article, Web Article, Social Post, or Wiki Summary. This reflects the source's type, not its quality.

Academic Provider Label

Academic source cards from Auto-Research show an additional provider label — arXiv, PubMed, OpenAlex, or Scholar — so you can tell at a glance which database the source came from, rather than seeing only the generic "Academic" type.

Freshness Badge

A year pill colour-coded by age:

• Green — published within the last 2 years
• Amber — published 3-5 years ago
• Grey — published more than 5 years ago

Hover the badge to see the full publication month and year.

Credibility Badge

A shield-icon badge showing High, Medium, Low, or Unknown — the primary trust signal on every source card. It replaces the old 1–3 ⭐ quality stars. The badge is a cheap, automatic, structural check: no claim verification happens. The heuristic looks at:

• Source tier — academic journal / government source scores higher than social post
• Author presence — a named author raises credibility; no author lowers it
• Date presence — a publication date is a positive signal
• Domain reputation — known reputable domains (e.g. .gov, .edu, established publishers) score higher; known low-reputation domains score lower
• Metadata completeness — richer enrichment scores better

Important: "Credibility" is not the same as "Verified." A High-credibility badge means the source looks trustworthy based on its structure — it does not mean a claim in it has been fact-checked. Full claim verification is a future feature (see Verify Buttons — Coming in W1.5 below). Hover the badge to see the tooltip with reason codes and the underlying quality detail from the old numeric score.

Use "credibility" as a quick first-pass signal; always read the source before citing it.

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Sources Column — Finding, Organising, and Trusting Your Sources

The Sources column (left side of the Cafe) was redesigned in W1.4 to make every source a genuine reference you can rely on, not just a bare URL. Key capabilities:

Grouping Knob

A control at the top of the Sources column lets you group sources three ways:

• Type (default) — collapsible sections by source type (Web, Academic, YouTube, Reddit, …)
• Used — splits sources into "Used in reports or Tray" vs "Unused" so you can quickly see what contributed to your output
• Credibility — groups by High / Medium / Low / Unknown tier

Groups collapse automatically when they contain more than five items. Click a group header to expand or collapse it. The grouping knob is purely visual — it doesn't change or delete anything.

Filter and Search Box

A text input above the Sources column filters visible cards by title, query, or body text. Results update as you type. The "Credible only" toggle narrows the column to High and Medium sources — useful when writing a report that needs citable, trustworthy references.

"Used in Reports" — Passages from Your Generated Reports

Expand any source card and look for a "Used in reports" section. This shows the exact passage(s) a generated report cited from that source, tagged with the report that used them. This fixes the "blank reference" problem — a source your report cited is never content-empty; you can always see what the report took from it.

Provenance Link (Clickable ↗)

Every source card shows a ↗ (open-in-new-tab) link next to the title. Click it to open the original URL — the primary source — in a new tab. This is the canonical provenance link for citations.

Earlier Research

Sources created by the older AI web-search path (before W1.4) — where the AI combined multiple results into a single synthesized response — are grouped under "Earlier research" (read-only). They are preserved exactly as gathered; they do not show a Credibility badge or Verify buttons. The "Credible only" filter hides them.

Verify Buttons — Live in W1.5c

Every source card shows two buttons: "Verify claim" and "Find credible source". Both are now fully active — clicking either one opens a dialog that runs a real cross-reference research loop.

• Verify claim — the agent extracts the source's main claims, you pick which to verify and set a token ceiling, and the loop finds corroborating and opposing evidence. The card resolves to a verdict badge: Verified / Contradicted / Mixed / Couldn't verify.
• Find credible source — for a weak or low-credibility source, the agent finds a stronger authoritative source supporting the same claim and saves it as an upgraded citation.

Both loops run in the background — you can close the dialog and come back later. See Verify Claim & Find Credible Source for the full walkthrough.

Legacy pill (W1.4 users): If you previously clicked Verify and saw a "Verify queued · coming in W1.5" pill, that pill is now replaced by the live verify dialog. The buttons are fully active.

On-Demand Full-Body Fetch

On any source card, a "Fetch full article" action pulls the entire body of the page on demand and stores it in the card for in-column reading. This is optional and gated (it costs a URL scrape). A fetch state indicator shows:

• Not fetched (default) — only the excerpt/abstract is stored
• Fetched — full body available
• Failed — scrape was blocked (e.g. paywall) — the excerpt and metadata are preserved; the card does not regress to a bare reference

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Source Download

Click the download icon on any source card or tray item for a dropdown:

• Download as .txt — structured plain text (title, authors, date, journal, DOI, URL, summary)
• Download as .json — full enrichment data as JSON

The filename includes the Cafe name and a short source ID. PDF and Markdown formats are planned for a future update.

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Provider Picker (Pro and Creator)

The Provider Picker lets you choose which search tools are active for a Cafe. Click the Providers chip row to expand the picker. Provider toggles here control the manual search bar and Auto-Write; the Auto-Research modal has its own per-run tool toggles that work alongside these settings.

Free providers (available to all tiers, always on):

• Web Search — AI-powered web search
• Academic Search — OpenAlex, arXiv, PubMed

Apify Actors (Pro and Creator only — each requires a one-time consent per Cafe):

• Google Scholar — Academic paper search via the Google Scholar actor
• Twitter / X — Recent posts on a topic
• Reddit — Community discussions and threads
• LinkedIn — Professional profiles and posts
• Instagram — Posts and profiles
• TikTok — Video posts
• YouTube Search — Video results (distinct from the YouTube Transcript extractor)

Enabling an Apify Actor

Toggle any Apify Actor chip. If you haven't consented to that Actor for this Cafe, a consent modal opens first. The modal shows:

• The platform's terms of service implications (e.g., LinkedIn's scraping policy)
• The approximate per-result token cost for that Actor
• Consent and Cancel buttons

Consenting is recorded per Cafe per Actor — you only see the modal once per Actor per Cafe. On subsequent uses, the Actor is available directly.

Apify Actors are Pro and Creator only — Free users see them greyed with an upgrade prompt.

Per-Actor Cost

Each Apify Actor charges a small per-result token cost (higher than the free academic databases). The consent modal shows the exact cost estimate before you enable an Actor.

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Research Sources

AI Web Search

Type a search query with the AI Web toggle selected. The AI searches the web, synthesizes findings, and presents a formatted response with inline citation links and a numbered Sources section at the bottom. Cost: a small portion of your allowance per search (varies by model). The per-action estimate is shown before you confirm.

Web search works with all models — not just Perplexity Sonar. The AI receives real-time web results regardless of which model you select.

Academic Papers

Click the Academic dropdown to choose from three academic search sources:

• OpenAlex — Search 250M+ works across all disciplines. Includes citation counts. Free, open-access metadata.
• arXiv — Search preprints in physics, mathematics, computer science, and related fields. Includes direct PDF links.
• PubMed — Search 35M+ biomedical and life sciences articles from the NCBI database.

Which database should I use?

Results show paper title, authors, year, citation count (where available), and abstract. Each paper card shows relevant links (DOI, arXiv ID, or PMID). You can:

• Analyze — Send the paper to AI for analysis (Key Findings, Methodology, Compare, ELI5, or custom prompt)
• Add Raw — Save the paper's abstract directly to your Cafe without AI processing
• Dismiss — Remove individual papers from results

The Analyze and Add Raw flows work identically regardless of which academic source you use.

YouTube Transcripts

Paste a YouTube URL and the search bar auto-detects it, showing a "YouTube Transcript" badge. Before extraction, a modal lets you choose:

• Content only — Extract just the transcript
• Summarize, Key Points, Fact Check, Topics & Structure — Extract and analyze in one step
• Custom prompt — Ask anything about the video

You can select multiple options at once.

URL Scraping

Paste any article URL (including www. addresses) and the search bar auto-detects it, showing a "Scrape URL" badge. Same modal options as YouTube — extract content only, or extract and analyze.

Add Multiple Sources at Once (Batch Import)

Pasting two or more sources into the search bar at once triggers the batch import modal automatically — no separate button to find. The bar's placeholder reads "AI web search, YouTube URL, article link — or paste multiple sources at once" as a reminder.

How it works:

1. In the search bar, paste a list of links and/or queries — newline-separated, comma-separated, or just whitespace-separated.
2. As soon as the parser detects 2+ items, the "Add multiple sources at once" modal opens, pre-populated with what you pasted.
3. Each item shows its detected type (Web Search / YouTube / Article / OpenAlex / arXiv / PubMed) with an icon and a per-item token cost. The footer shows the total source count and total cost estimate.
4. Click Run all — items are dispatched to the correct backends with a concurrency cap of 3 (so we don't burst-rate-limit Apify or OpenRouter) and a 1.5s stagger between launches.
5. Each row updates live: Pending → In progress → Done ✓ / Failed ✗. A retry counter appears next to in-progress rows when transient failures (502/503/timeout/Apify/network) trigger an automatic retry.
6. After the batch completes, a summary banner shows how many succeeded, how many failed, how many tokens were charged. Failed items can be retried with one click; sibling successes are not re-run.

Mixed input examples:

Type-hint prefixes (case-insensitive — useful when you want to force a specific backend instead of relying on auto-detect):

• arxiv: pubmed: openalex: academic: — academic backends
• web: search: — force web search (handy when a query happens to look like a domain)
• youtube: yt: — force YouTube (rarely needed; auto-detect handles the common YouTube URL forms)
• url: scrape: — force URL scraping

A line that starts with one of these prefixes is treated as a single item even if it contains spaces (e.g. arxiv: deep RL for robotics is one query, not three).

Tier limits:

If you paste more than the cap, the extras are dropped and an amber "Capped at N items per batch" hint appears. The modal still runs the items it kept.

Failure isolation and retries:

• One bad URL (404, 502, Apify timeout) does not stop sibling items.
• Each item retries up to 3 attempts automatically on transient failures (5xx, 429, timeout, network, Apify-shaped errors). 4xx errors and "no papers found" fail immediately.
• The summary banner is colour-coded: green (all succeeded), amber (partial), red (none succeeded). Failed items can be re-run via the Retry button — successes are skipped.
• The modal blocks accidental dismiss (Escape, click-outside) only while the run is in flight so you don't lose progress mid-batch. After the run completes, you can close it normally.

Cancelling mid-batch: click Cancel. In-flight items are allowed to complete (the server has already done the work and may have already billed for them); pending items are dropped at no charge.

Cost: the same per-item fees as the single-input bar — see the Token Costs table below. The total at the bottom of the modal is the sum of every parsed item's per-type fee, computed before you click Run all.

Ask AI (on any saved source)

Every saved research source has an Ask AI button. Click it to open the analysis modal and run AI analysis on any previously saved content — web search results, transcripts, scraped pages, uploaded documents, or imported notebook entries.

The Serving Tray

The right panel is your Serving Tray — a curated collection of the most useful snippets from your research.

Adding to the Tray

• Highlight text in any research result → floating toolbar appears → "Add to Tray"
• Add to Tray button on each source card adds the full content
• Import from Notebooks brings in highlights and notes from your Scribes

Managing Tray Items

• Drag to reorder items
• Click to expand/collapse (items show 5 lines by default)
• Edit notes on any item
• Delete with undo (5-second window to restore)

Source Provenance

Each tray item shows a small label indicating where it came from — for example, "Web: coffee brewing methods" or "YouTube: How espresso works". Items you created manually show "Manual note". This helps you track the origin of each snippet, especially when combining research from multiple sources. The same labels appear in the Workspace Cafe Trays tab and the import modal.

When you import tray items into a Scribe section, the source attribution line includes the original source query and URL (when available), formatted as: Source: {Cafe name} . {query} . {url}.

Editing Tray Item Text

Click any tray item's text to edit it inline. A textarea opens where you can modify the content directly. Press Ctrl+Enter (or Cmd+Enter on Mac) to save, or Escape to cancel without changes. Each tray item supports a generous character limit per note — long enough for substantial excerpts.

Adding Notes

Click the + button in the Serving Tray header to create a blank note. This is useful for pasting in content from external sources that aren't covered by the built-in search and scraping tools, or for writing your own observations and annotations alongside your research.

Combining Items

To merge multiple tray items into one:

1. Click the Select toggle in the Serving Tray header to enter selection mode
2. Use the checkboxes to select two or more items you want to combine
3. Click the Combine button that appears
4. The selected items are merged into a single item, with each constituent prefixed by its source label (e.g. [From source: Smith 2022]: ...) and separated by horizontal rules
5. An Undo option appears for 5 seconds in case you want to reverse the merge

The combined item shows a "Combined from N sources" badge so you can tell at a glance it's a merge. Source provenance is preserved — if all constituent items came from the same source, the combined item inherits that source link; if they came from different sources, the combined item is unlocked from any single citation (useful for tray-mode Auto-Write, where each constituent is labelled individually in the prompt).

Combining is useful for assembling related excerpts from different sources into one consolidated reference.

Using Tray Content

Tray items are ready to use in your Scribes, Notebooks, or Workspace. In the Workspace, the Cafe Trays tab lets you browse and paste tray items directly into sections.

Choosing a Model

The model selector appears below the search bar, next to the cost estimate. Your selected model is used for all AI operations — web search, paper analysis, and Ask AI.

• Free + Pro are locked to the curated CoffeeScribe Model (no picker shown)
• Creator unlocks the full picker — CoffeeScribe Model recommended at the top, ~12 curated alternatives, then a collapsed advanced disclosure for the full 350+ catalogue (at your own risk)

Each result card shows which model was used, how many tokens were charged, and whether web sources were found. Different models produce different quality results — experiment to find what works best for your research topic.

Q&A Chat (Ask Your Cafe)

Once your Cafe has research sources or tray items, a chat bubble appears in the bottom-right corner. Click it to open the Q&A panel and ask natural-language questions across all your collected research.

How It Works

Your research is automatically processed into searchable chunks using local embeddings — no data leaves the server. When you ask a question, the system finds the most relevant passages from your sources and tray items, then sends them to the AI along with your question to generate a grounded answer.

The chat bubble appears as soon as you add your first source. While your sources are being processed for search, a spinner indicates that embeddings are in progress. You can still browse your research — the Q&A will be ready in a few seconds.

Asking Questions

1. Click the chat bubble (bottom-right)
2. Type your question and press Enter (or click Send)
3. The AI answers using only your Cafe's research, citing sources as numbered references like [1], [2]
4. Click any citation badge to scroll to the original source in your Cafe

Filtering Sources

By default, Q&A searches across all sources and tray items in your Cafe. To query only specific items:

1. Click the filter icon (funnel) in the Q&A chat header
2. Checkboxes appear on all sources and tray items
3. Select the items you want to include in your query
4. An indicator shows "Querying N of M sources"
5. Ask your question — the AI will only search the selected items

To return to querying everything, deselect all items or click the filter icon again. When no items are selected, Q&A automatically searches all sources.

Conversation Context

The chat maintains conversation history within a session. Follow-up questions can reference earlier answers — for example, "Tell me more about point 3" or "How does that compare to the other study?"

Click Clear Chat to permanently delete all Q&A history and start fresh. This cannot be undone.

Actions on Answers

Each answer has action buttons:

• Copy — Copies the answer with a full reference list appended
• +Tray — Save the answer to your Serving Tray
• +Source — Save as a new research source
• +Notebook — Save to your Notebooks as a free note
• Delete — Remove a single Q&A entry

Editable Source Titles

Double-click any research source title to rename it. This helps you organise your sources when the auto-generated titles aren't descriptive enough. Tray items can also have custom titles.

Embedding Costs

Each research source and tray item is automatically chunked and embedded when created. This is a small one-time cost per item, broken into chunks of a few thousand characters each. The per-action estimate is always shown before you confirm.

Model

Q&A uses Gemini 2.5 Flash — a model chosen specifically for its ability to follow strict instructions and answer only from provided context. This is separate from the model you select for web search and analysis.

Sharing a Cafe

You can share any Cafe with other Coffeescribe users via a read-only link.

Enabling Sharing

1. Open a Cafe and click Share in the toolbar
2. Toggle Enable sharing on
3. A share URL appears — click Copy to copy it to your clipboard
4. Send the link to anyone with a Coffeescribe account

What Viewers Can Do

Viewers who open your shared link can:

• Browse all your research sources and their content
• Read your Serving Tray items
• Ask Q&A questions about your research (using their own tokens, not yours)
• Copy text from sources and tray items

What Viewers Cannot Do

Viewers cannot search, add sources, modify tray items, delete anything, or save Q&A answers to your Cafe. All edit controls are hidden. Read-only access is enforced at the database level.

Q&A on Shared Cafes

Viewers can ask Q&A questions in your shared Cafe. Their questions use their token balance (not yours), and their Q&A history is session-only — it is not saved to your Cafe and disappears when they close the page.

Revoking Access

Toggle sharing off in the Share dialog to immediately disable the link. Anyone with the old link will be redirected away.

Regenerating the Link

Click Regenerate link to create a new share URL. The old link immediately stops working. A confirmation dialog warns you before regenerating.

Share Indicator

Shared Cafes show a small share icon next to the cafe name on the Research listing page, so you can easily see which Cafes are currently shared.

Auto-Research (W1.5b)

Auto-Research is a steerable AI agent that researches a topic for you across a wide range of tools. You control what it uses, how deep it goes, and what it extracts — the agent turns those controls into a plan, executes it step by step, and sends the results into your Sources column and Serving Tray.

Click the Auto-Research button in your Cafe toolbar to open the control surface.

Runs in the Background — Survives Closing the Tab

Auto-Research runs as a server-side background job. Once you click Start Research, the run continues on the server regardless of what you do in your browser:

• Close the tab, refresh, or navigate away — the run keeps going. Come back to the Cafe and your sources will be there when it finishes.
• Reattach after a refresh — if a run is still in progress when you reload the page, the live progress panel comes back automatically.
• Sources land as the agent works — sources are saved to your Cafe as each step completes. Tray items (your selected extract types) are added once the full run finishes.

Note: Tray items are only produced when the run completes. If you cancel mid-run, sources gathered before you stopped are kept, but no tray items are produced — the synthesis step only runs on completion.

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What to EXTRACT

Choose what the agent synthesizes into your Serving Tray at the end of the run. Select one or more:

• Key Findings — the most important takeaways from the research
• Summary — a concise overview of what was found
• Best Quotes — the most citable or representative passages
• Most Up-to-Date — the most recent information on the topic
• Contradictions & Gaps — conflicting claims and missing evidence

These become Serving Tray items marked with a robot icon when the run completes. You can edit, delete, or build on them like any other tray item.

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Tools

The agent can search across a wide range of sources. Toggle each tool on or off before starting:

Always-free tools (no consent required):

Consent-gated tools (Pro and Creator only):

Each of the following requires a one-time per-Cafe consent the first time you enable it. The consent modal explains the platform's terms, what data is sent, and the approximate cost per result. After consenting, the tool is available immediately for that Cafe.

What consent means: These tools use Apify actors to access social platforms. Your search query is sent to Apify; it runs the actor on its own infrastructure. Your queries are not attributed to your personal account on those platforms. Consent is recorded per Cafe per tool — you only see the modal once per tool per Cafe. See the Privacy Policy and Third-Party Data Sources section for the platforms' terms of service links.

Free tier: The six consent-gated tools are Pro and Creator only. Enabling them on Free shows an upgrade prompt.

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Research Depth

Important about Deep: The token budget is a hard ceiling, not a target. The agent uses its own judgment and stops when it believes it has gathered enough, which is often well before the budget is exhausted. "Deep" means the agent is instructed to be thorough — it does not mean it will burn your entire budget. The pre-flight cost estimate is shown before you start; a Deep warning appears in the modal when Deep is selected.

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Results Per Search (Top-k)

The Results per search control (5 / 10 / 20) sets the candidate pool size — how many results each search tool fetches for the agent to consider. This is separate from depth:

• Depth = how many cycles / how hard the agent tries
• Results per search = how wide a net each individual search casts

Higher top-k gives the agent more to choose from per step but increases per-step cost.

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Advanced Controls

Click Advanced — prompt, skills & loop to expand:

Prompt Sections

The agent's behaviour is driven by five editable prompt sections. Each has a sensible default — edit to shape the run, or click Reset to restore the default:

• Role — what kind of researcher the agent acts as
• Method — how it approaches the topic (broad-to-deep, query variation, source routing)
• Evidence & Skepticism — how hard it tries to disprove claims before accepting them
• Source Hierarchy — how to weight different source types (peer-review > preprint > official > news > social)
• Output Contract — what to extract and how to format it

Note: The JSON-plan contract (the machine-readable format the agent uses to structure its plan) is always appended by the system after your text and cannot be overridden. Editing prompt sections changes the agent's strategy, not its ability to produce a parseable plan.

Research Skills

Toggle preset research playbooks on or off:

• Systematic Literature Review — structured, comprehensive, tracks methodology
• Fact-Check Claims — actively seeks disconfirming evidence
• Find Opposing Views — seeks counter-arguments and alternative perspectives

Each skill injects additional instructions into the agent's planner and synthesis steps.

Fan-Out (Sub-Question Decomposition)

When Fan-out is enabled, the planner decomposes the topic into parallel sub-questions rather than running a single linear sweep. Each sub-question is researched independently; results are merged and synthesized together. Use fan-out for complex or multi-faceted topics where a single query would miss important angles.

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Live Progress and Cancel

While the agent runs, a live progress log shows each step (tool, query, step result), running token cost, and source count. Sources appear in the Sources column as they're found.

Cancel: Click Stop at any time. The server-side job receives the cancel signal and stops at the next step boundary. Sources gathered before you stopped are kept. Tray items are not produced for a cancelled run.

Per-step timeout: If a tool step hangs (for example, a slow Apify actor cold-start), it automatically times out after 90 seconds, is marked as skipped, and the run continues. You will never see an infinite spinner.

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Budget Control

Set a token budget before starting. This is a hard ceiling — the agent stops before or at this limit and synthesizes with whatever it has gathered. The pre-flight cost estimate is shown in the modal before you commit.

Auto-Research is available to all tiers. Free and Pro use the curated CoffeeScribe Model; Creator users can choose a different model from the picker.

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Third-Party Data Sources

The consent-gated social and scholar tools access content via Apify actors. By enabling them you acknowledge that:

• The data is accessed via third-party actors and is subject to each platform's terms of service.
• Content from these platforms is for use in your own research within those terms.
• Apify is the access layer; see the Apify Privacy Policy.

Relevant platform terms:

Legal note: An AUP / indemnification clause for automated access to third-party platforms is a legal-team follow-up item and is not yet included. Use these tools responsibly and within each platform's terms.

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Availability

Other Features

Notebook Import

Click Import in the Cafe toolbar to bring in highlights and notes from any of your Scribes. Choose to import as Research Material (left panel) or directly to the Tray (right panel).

Document Upload

Click Upload to add PDF, DOCX, TXT, or MD files (up to 5 MB) as research sources.

Deleting Sources

Hover over any research source to see the delete button. Deletion includes a 5-second undo window.

Token Costs

All costs are deducted from your token balance. The per-action estimate is always shown before you confirm so you know what you're spending.

Availability

Tips

• Create multiple Cafes for different topics — one Cafe per research project
• Use Academic search for scholarly sources — try OpenAlex for broad coverage, arXiv for preprints, or PubMed for biomedical literature
• YouTube transcripts are great for extracting key points from lectures and interviews
• Combine sources — search the web, find papers, scrape articles, then curate the best bits on your Tray
• Ask AI on anything — the Ask AI button works on every saved source, so you can re-analyze content with different questions
• Multi-select presets — when analyzing YouTube or URLs, select multiple presets (Summarize + Key Points) to get several analyses at once
• Add Notes for external content — use the + button to paste in material from sources outside Coffeescribe (emails, documents, other tools)
• Combine related items — merge excerpts from different sources into a single consolidated reference before pasting into your Workspace
• Edit tray text freely — click any tray item to refine wording, trim irrelevant parts, or add your own annotations inline
• Ask your Cafe — once you have research, use the Q&A chat bubble to ask questions and get referenced answers grounded in your collected material
• Filter Q&A sources — click the funnel icon in the Q&A header to query only specific sources instead of your entire Cafe
• Save Q&A answers — save useful answers back to your Tray, as new sources, or to Notebooks for use in your Scribes
• Rename sources — double-click any source title to give it a more descriptive name
• Share your research — use the Share button to send a read-only link to collaborators (Cafe sharing). They can browse and ask Q&A questions using their own tokens. To share a specific report only, use the Share button on the report card (see Auto-Write Research Reports)
• Paste a reading list in one go — got a tab-soup or a notes-app dump of links? Paste the whole blob into the search bar and the batch import modal opens automatically (Free 5 / Pro & Creator 50 items per batch). Way faster than feeding them in one at a time.
• Paste a DOI or PMID to get a fully enriched source card instantly — the identifier input auto-detects the type and fetches structured metadata so you don't have to copy-paste authors and journals manually (Pro/Creator).
• Set your citation style once per Cafe — open Settings (gear icon), pick APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago N-B, or Harvard CTR, and every enriched source card renders formatted citations automatically.
• Check the credibility badge before citing — a High or Medium credibility source with "Academic Journal/Paper" tier and a green freshness badge is your safest bet for academic writing. Remember: the badge is a structural check, not fact-verification — always read the source.
• Enable Academic Sources Only in Settings — flipping this filter in a research Cafe for a dissertation or report hides web articles and social posts so only peer-reviewed and government sources appear.
• Try LinkedIn or Reddit Actors for professional or community insight — enable them via the Provider Picker; the one-time consent modal only appears on the first enable per Cafe (Pro/Creator).