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Ask a question addressed to your whole library and Anara searches every paper you have uploaded, returning the specific passages that support, complicate, or contradict the argument you are building. You see which papers matter and exactly what they say. For when you need to know what your library actually has before you write.

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1. Describe the task

You have a library and a claim you are developing, but you do not know which papers to reach for. The triage is the problem: fifty files, two hundred files, and the one you need is somewhere in there. Anara can do the search across all of them. Ask which papers support a specific argument, discuss a particular concept, or take a position on a methodological question. Anara searches your entire library, returns the specific passages with clickable citations, and tells you where papers agree and where they pull in different directions. You do not need to open files or remember what you uploaded. Here a PhD student in political sociology has a library of 180 papers on institutional responses to student activism and wants to know which ones argue that administrative leadership shapes student experience through indirect structural mechanisms. 
I am writing a chapter on how administrative leadership shapes student experience in higher education. My argument is that administrators influence students primarily through indirect structural mechanisms rather than direct interaction.

Search my library and tell me: which papers argue for or against this claim? I want the specific passages, not general summaries. If any papers distinguish between direct and indirect mechanisms explicitly, flag those first. If you find papers that complicate or contradict the argument, include them too.

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2. Give Anara context

Required context
  • Your library, or a specific folder within it that covers the topic you are researching.
Optional context
  • A rough argument structure or thesis statement, so Anara can search for supporting and opposing evidence in one pass.
  • Any papers you know are relevant. Naming them helps Anara prioritize coverage.

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3. What Anara creates

A ranked list of papers with the specific passages most relevant to your argument, each passage linked to its source with a clickable citation. Anara groups results by those that support the argument, those that complicate it, and those that contradict it. The output is a literature triage: you know what you have, what load-bearing work each paper can do, and where your library has gaps before you write a word.

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4. Follow-up prompts

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Drill into the strongest match

When a paper comes up and you want to understand what it actually argues before you cite it. 
Pull out the full argument from the Tudge et al. paper on indirect leadership mechanisms. Show me the surrounding context for that passage, not just the matched excerpt. I want to see how they set up the claim before I use it.

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Find where two papers diverge

When you want to use a tension in the literature as the spine of your argument. 
You found three papers that all mention structural mechanisms, but I noticed Branson and Kim seem to disagree on what counts as indirect. Find the specific passages where they frame the concept differently and show me the contrast side by side.

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Draft a paragraph from the top results

When the triage is done and you are ready to write. 
Using the four papers you flagged as most supportive, draft a 200-word paragraph that synthesizes their position on indirect administrative mechanisms. Cite each paper inline with the specific passage you are drawing from. Do not add anything not in my library.

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5. Tricks, tips, and troubleshooting

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How you word your prompt shapes what you get

Phrase your question as an argument, not a topic. “Which papers discuss leadership” returns a broad set. “Which papers argue that leadership operates through structural mechanisms rather than direct interaction” returns papers that actually take a position. The more specific the claim, the sharper the triage. If you want keyword-level precision (an exact term, a specific author name, a methodology label), say so: “search for the term ‘indirect mechanism’ as it appears in my library” runs a keyword pass that semantic search alone might miss.

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Check the output against your own understanding

Anara retrieves passages by semantic similarity. A passage can be genuinely relevant, or it can be adjacent without actually advancing your argument. Read the matched passages before you build on them. If a paper shows up that you know contradicts your reading of it, that is worth investigating: either the passage is being read out of context, or your memory of the paper is incomplete. Both outcomes are useful. Ask Anara to show more context around any passage that surprises you.

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What to do with the output next

Treat the triage as a first cut, not a final bibliography. Papers that came up as supportive should be read in full before you cite them. Papers that came up as contradicting your argument are often more valuable than the supporting ones: they are the conversation you need to engage with. Once the triage is clean, move to the literature review drafting workflow to turn the mapped papers into a written section with inline citations.