EssentAI

EssentAI is a desktop literature organisation system developed to support PhD researchers managing complex and multi theoretical literature reviews.

EssentAI maintains a local library of academic papers, storing each article and its extracted research fields in one place so researchers can search, filter and revisit their literature efficiently.

Rather than functioning as a reference manager, EssentAI extracts and structures each paper into defined research components, including:

• Summary • Research gap • Method used • Theoretical framework • Constructs • Stated key findings

This helps researchers retrieve, review and synthesise literature based on conceptual elements rather than file names, folders or simple tags.

Subscription and access model: EssentAI runs locally on Windows and macOS and operates using a bring your own OpenAI key model, giving users control over their OpenAI usage. An active subscription is required to analyse new articles and add them to the library. If a subscription ends, existing stored articles remain accessible for review, but new articles cannot be added.

Developed by a confirmed PhD candidate to address recall overload and synthesis challenges common in doctoral research.

Pricing: 9.99 AUD per month.