Rivul AI Documentation
Guides and reference for bringing in any source, from PDFs, scans and recordings to text and metadata for 300M+ academic papers, and researching across it with Ask Rivul, Research, agents and Rivul MCP.
For students, engineers, academics, researchers, and anyone who works from sources.
Get Started
- QuickstartSign in, connect a key, search, ask, run an agent and connect Rivul MCP, in six steps.
- Bring your own keyConnect Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Mistral, or Meta. See what needs a key.
- Set up Rivul MCPSearch metadata for 300M+ academic papers from Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other MCP clients.
Explore by Product Area
Write
Draft in Papers, run a research question in the Research notebook, and ask your own sources with Ask Rivul.
Agents
Run research agents, guide them with skills, and use Rivul search from Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other MCP clients.
Sources
Keep PDFs and references in the Library, search metadata for 300M+ academic papers, and connect Google Drive, Docs and Zotero.
Convert
Turn scans and images into text, recordings into timestamped transcripts, and any text into speech.
Tools
Format a reference from a DOI or a saved paper, build BibTeX, and convert between formats.
Common Tasks
What’s New
- A six-step Quickstart, from sign-in to a first agent run and Rivul MCP.
- REST API reference: endpoints, fields, errors and the OpenAPI document.
- Every limit in one table, read from the code that enforces it.
- Troubleshooting: each message Rivul AI shows, and what to do.
- Papers: Word import and version history.
- Skills: category tabs, and community skills from skills.sh.
Account, Troubleshooting and Reference
Account and security
Sign-in, Settings, what leaves your account when you use AI, and exporting or deleting your data.
Troubleshooting
What a message means and what to do: AI keys, uploads, OCR, transcripts, limits and Rivul MCP.
Reference
Every limit in one table, keyboard shortcuts, and the terms the docs use.
Common Questions
Is Rivul AI free?
Yes. Rivul AI is free for every account and takes no card. AI features run on your own API key, billed by your AI provider. Sign in with Google.
Who is Rivul AI for?
Anyone who works from sources: students, engineers, academics, researchers, and anyone who wants a long PDF, a recording or an article turned into something they can search, ask and check.
What works without an AI key?
Search papers, the Library, Document OCR, Transcribe, Listen, Rivul MCP and REST search, citation tools and export. Ask Rivul, Research briefs, agent runs and the editor's AI actions use your own key.
Where is my text sent?
Only to the AI provider you connected, using your own API key, and only when you use an AI feature. Document OCR, Transcribe and the Rivul voice run on Rivul AI's own servers. Rivul AI does not train models on your files.
Can I use Rivul AI from Claude Code, Codex or Cursor?
Yes. Connect Rivul MCP once and the client can search metadata for 300M+ academic papers, or call the same search over the REST API.
Is an answer with a citation proof that it is right?
No. A citation shows where a claim came from. Open the passage or the source before you rely on it.
Questions or a Problem?
Start with Troubleshooting. For anything else, use the contact form.
Moving From Zotero
Follow the Zotero import workflow to bring an existing library into Rivul AI.