Research deeper
Teach smarter
Study better

A local-first workspace for researchers, teachers, and students to connect sources, notes, data, ideas, and learning materials.

Try the live demo

Completely free and open source. No accounts, no subscriptions, no telemetry, and your corpus never leaves your machine.

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The vaults

The same engine, shaped to your work.

A vault is a single file on your device, holding one project. Its mode decides which sections appear and how the AI assistant is briefed. The engine, private storage and settings stay the same across every mode. Six modes are available today; Primary Sources, Testimony and Prosopography show what is coming next.

Academic

Available now

Connect your Zotero library and turn every work into a network of claims, findings and methods. Each idea retains the exact passage and page that support it.

Open the academic demo →
01

Turn your Zotero library into a graph of ideas, linking claims, findings and methods to their exact passage and page.

02

Surface debates, contradictions and research gaps, then explore them through semantic search, coverage analysis and reading paths.

03

Research and write with verifiable citations through Deep Research, the writing workshop and copilots for Word and LibreOffice.

If you research

Turn sources and data into a corpus you can question, map and write from. Use Academic, Genealogy and Databases today; Primary Sources, Testimony and Prosopography are coming for archival, oral-history and collective-biography research.

If you teach

Plan courses, classes, assessment and feedback in Teaching, and give learners a grounded workspace in Study. The forthcoming Primary Sources, Testimony and Prosopography vaults will also support source-based seminars and research-led teaching.

If you study

Organise materials, schedules, practice and progress in Study. For advanced projects, Academic, Genealogy and Databases are available now; Primary Sources, Testimony and Prosopography will add specialist paths for archival and social research.

Nodus Toolkit · Included

Four powerful tools. Already inside Nodus.

Vaults give each project its structure. Nodus Toolkit handles the practical jobs before, during and after it, with focused utilities included in the same private desktop app.

Present differently

PDF Presenter

Turn any PDF into a lightweight presentation. Give every page its own speaker text, import existing presenter notes or write them in Nodus, and read them from your computer or phone while you present. Use the phone as a remote to change slides and control the live tools.

Phone remote Laser pointer Spotlight Live drawing Zoom
PDF · presentation mode Your document, page by page. Page 12 of 24
Try the live tools ↓
Your notes · page 12

Pause here. Compare the two sources before revealing the next page.

Page 12 · notes

Compare both sources before moving on.

Nodus Converter

Change files into the format you need from one focused workspace, without bouncing between online services or losing track of the original.

Format conversionOriginal preserved

Nodus OCR

Choose the right extraction path for each document: visual AI for difficult layouts and images, or conventional OCR engines for fast, non-AI text recognition.

Visual AIConventional OCR

Nodus Protector

Create shareable copies with visible or invisible watermarks while keeping the untouched original safe in your workspace.

Visible marksInvisible marks
How it works

From your sources to ideas you can use.

Whatever you bring in, a research library, your own class notes, a recorded lecture, a box of old records or a table of data, Nodus reads it for the ideas and entities it actually holds. Then it connects them, and lets you ask questions that stay grounded in what is really there.

1

Bring in your material

Sync a Zotero library, drop in your own files, record a class or import a set of records. Nodus reads the content directly on your device, with nothing to upload and no plugin to install.

Zotero or your own filesAudio recorded and transcribedRecords and tables
2

It reads for meaning

An AI pass, in the cloud with your own key or fully offline, pulls out the claims, concepts, people or values each source holds and keeps the exact passage behind every one. Nothing is saved without the evidence for it.

Ideas & entities with page-level evidenceYour key, or run it offline
3

It connects, and answers

Ideas link into a living map, records line up into people and timelines, rows turn into charts. The assistant answers over that and only over that, so you can always trace a claim back to where it came from.

A map you can follow and questionAnswers you can trace to the source
Every vault, in motion

See what each mode can do.

Each panel below is a real view from the app, opened in the mode it belongs to. The further you go, the more the same engine turns out to do.

Academic

Your reading becomes a map

Every work breaks into the claims and findings it makes, and they link into one living map of supports, contradictions and refinements. A pile of papers starts to read like an argument.

Open in the demo →
GRAPH · 12 NODES
RETRIEVAL PRACTICE Active retrieval beats re-reading Testing effect at a delay Effect fades with complexity Desirable difficulties Element interactivity COGNITIVE LOAD
Academic

Reports that cite for real, read aloud

Deep Research writes several pages and checks every citation against your sources. A reference that does not resolve to something real never makes the page. Then you can turn the finished report into a narrated walk, in a local voice or a studio-grade cloud one.

Open in the demo →
DEEP RESEARCH · READ OR PLAY
Page 1Page 2Page 3
[1] Roediger & Karpicke 2006, p. 251 [2] Karpicke & Blunt 2011, p. 774
Narrated audio · sample
0:00
Academic

See where the literature disagrees

Nodus sets competing claims face to face with their evidence and chronology, then turns missing connections into explicit research questions you can pursue.

Open in the demo →
DEBATE · EVIDENCE ON BOTH SIDES
Retrieval improves transfer
Karpicke & Blunt, 2011 · p. 774
Roediger & Butler, 2011 · p. 21
VS
Benefit depends on complexity
Van Gog & Sweller, 2015 · p. 39
Leahy et al., 2015 · p. 68
2006debate develops2015
Research gap · Which task conditions reverse the effect?
Study

Turn your notes into a test

Point Nodus at a topic and it drafts questions, tests and exams from your own material. Practise them, mark yourself, and keep only the ones you approve.

Open in the demo →
QUESTION BANK · FROM YOUR NOTES
Which mechanism moves solutes against their gradient?
Simple diffusion
Osmosis
Active transport
Filtration
Drawn from your note · “Plasma membrane · summary”, p. 2
Study

Ask your notes anything

The study chat answers from your notes, slides and materials, and every reply points back to the page it came from. No guessing, and nothing it cannot show you in your own material.

Open in the demo →
STUDY CHAT · GROUNDED LOCALLY
Explain passive and active transport simply.
Passive transport goes downhill, so the cell spends nothing. Active transport goes uphill against the gradient, so it needs energy [1].
[1] Plasma membrane · summary, p. 2
Study

Your whole academic year, under control

Organise materials by year, course and subject, then bring timetables, deadlines, exams and study sessions into one calendar with reminders and progress.

Open in the demo →
STUDY PLANNER · WEEK 8
History · Year 23 deadlines this week
Mon
Modern history
10:00
Tue
Read ch. 4
45 min
Wed
Seminar
12:30
Thu
Essay draft
Due 18:00
Fri
Flashcards
32 due
Course materials · 18Weekly progress · 74%
Genealogy

A family, rebuilt from the records

People, dates and places are pulled out of censuses, registers and letters. The assistant proposes how they connect and waits for you to confirm before anyone joins the tree.

Open in the demo →
FAMILY TREE · 1 SUGGESTION
Casimiro Dolores Rafael proposed marriage
Casimiro & Dolores, marriedfrom the 1890 marriage record and a 1901 letter
ConfirmDismiss
Genealogy

Not only kin, but who knew whom

Beyond the family tree, Nodus maps the social web around each person. Godparents, witnesses, neighbours and business partners become a prosopography you can read across a whole community.

Open in the demo →
SOCIAL RELATIONS · PROSOPOGRAPHY
godparent witness neighbour partner Rafael Encarnación Vicente Amparo Dolores
Relations drawn straight from the records, not just bloodlines.
Genealogy

Every life event keeps its evidence

Build a connected archive of registers, censuses, letters and photographs. Every birth, marriage, residence and relationship stays traceable to the exact record that supports it.

Open in the demo →
SOURCE ARCHIVE · 4 LINKED RECORDS
Marriage register1890 · image + transcription
Municipal census1901 · household 47
Personal letter1901 · 3 people mentioned
Family photographc. 1904 · 5 identities
Marriage · Casimiro + Dolores · supported by 2 independent records
Databases

You bring the data, Nodus runs the numbers

Turn your own records into typed tables, then ask for an analysis. The assistant picks the method and the app computes it for real, so a correlation or a regression is a calculation, never a guess.

Open in the demo →
ANALYSIS · FIELD NOTEBOOK
SiteDepth numFinds numLayer select
Trench A0.412topsoil
Trench B1.134fill
Trench C1.958floor
Depth × findsr = 0.71

Deeper trenches yield more finds. Computed over your rows, not estimated.

Databases

Ask your table, get a chart

Ask a question in plain words and get a straight answer over the real rows, drawn as a chart when it helps. It never invents a value that is not in your data.

Open in the demo →
DATA CHAT · OVER YOUR ROWS
Average finds per layer?
Floor layers average 58, fill 34 and topsoil 12 computed.
topsoil fill floor
Databases

Model your data without flattening it

Create typed fields, relations, formulas, rollups and reusable filtered views. Import a CSV, connect tables, and let AI columns classify rows without inventing data.

Open in the demo →
SCHEMA BUILDER · 2 RELATED TABLES
Excavation units
Sitetext
Depthnumber
Findsrelation
Finds catalogue
Objecttext
Materialselect
Unitrelation
AI column · classify material from description · 58 rows ready for review
Teaching

Classes and grades, kept private

Manage your classes and grades in one place. Nodus never sends rosters, grades or student answers to AI and never uses AI to evaluate students.

Open in the demo →
GRADEBOOK · NEVER SENT TO AI
StudentTest 1Test 2Avg
S-48217.58.07.8
S-48226.07.56.8
S-48239.08.58.8
The AI only ever sees these codes, never a student's name.
Teaching

Rubrics and exams, grounded in your material

Build weighted analytic rubrics, reusable question banks and printable exams. Review every criterion, achievement level, answer and score before exporting.

Open in the demo →
RUBRIC · HISTORICAL SOURCE COMMENTARY
Historical context · 30%
Content analysis · 30%
Subject vocabulary · 25%
Clarity · 15%
Weights 100% · quality check passed
Teaching

From the assessment plan to every final grade

Publish the weighting rules before grading, preserve exempt, not assessed and not submitted as distinct states, and open the calculation behind any final result.

Open in the demo →
ASSESSMENT PLAN · PUBLISHED V1
History · Year 9 AWeights 100%
30%
Unit 3
exam
20%
Map
test
30%
Source
commentary
10%
Class
notebook
10%
Reasoned
participation
Non-numeric statuses · explicitCalculation · auditable
Open the six live demos →
Video tutorials

Learn Nodus, step by step.

Short guided videos for setting up each vault, discovering key features and connecting Nodus to the tools you already use.

Free & local-first, honestly

Completely free. Completely yours.

Nodus 4 is open source under the AGPL-3.0-only license, with no accounts, no subscriptions and no telemetry. Vaults and the optional cross-vault Library stay under your control on your device and in the backup folder you choose. AI runs with your own key or fully offline through Ollama and LM Studio. Encrypted full-state backups protect every vault and the Library, and a verified pre-v4 copy makes the 3.2.7 upgrade recoverable.

Free forever (AGPL-3.0-only) 100% local storage Offline AI (Ollama · LM Studio) Encrypted auto-backups Audit ledger MCP server built in
Everything inside

One app. The whole research loop.

Open source, together

Every node counts.

Nodus grows one contribution at a time, like grains of sand that each add to the whole. A single builder started it, and anyone can add the next grain.

The people building Nodus
Loading contributors…
Each grain a contribution.
Questions before you begin

Nodus, AI and academic rigor: the essentials.

Clear answers for getting started safely, choosing an AI setup and understanding what the app can and cannot do.

Ready to meet your library?

Try the demo right here in your browser, or download the app and point it at your own Zotero. Free and open source, forever.

Try the live demo

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