Add papers

Adding papers is free. You can add as many as you like within your storage; there is no paper-count allowance.

In a project’s Library, select Add paper. You can upload a PDF, paste a link or identifier, search for a paper, enter a bibliographic record, or import a library file.

PDFs must have 150 pages or fewer, including imported files and attachments. A longer PDF, or one whose page count cannot be checked, is refused before processing or using any plan usage. Export a readable, shorter PDF and try again; you can still save a metadata-only reference without attaching the PDF.

Storage is 1 GB on Free and 10 GB on Pro, counted across projects the account owns. At the cap, new uploads, imports, captures, attachments and writing assets stop, and watched folders pause. Existing research remains readable and exportable; deletion and restore still work. Trashed files count until purged. See Plans and credits.

Choose an intake path

• Upload: use a PDF you already have. Distari keeps the original file and can process its text and summary.
• Link or ID: paste a DOI, arXiv ID or supported publisher link. Distari looks for metadata and a usable PDF. If no PDF is available, the result says so and keeps a metadata-only record.
• Search: find a work in external research sources, inspect it and add it to this project.
• Manual entry: add a paper whose metadata you know even when you have no file.
• Import file: choose a BibTeX, RIS or CSL-JSON bibliography and, if you have them, a ZIP of its PDFs. Review the preview before starting the import.

The app checks for a paper already in the project. When it finds a likely duplicate or a new version, review the match before choosing whether to reuse, link as a version, merge or keep both. An exact DOI cannot become two live records in the same project.

In Search results, select +N beside a shortened author list to check every name before adding the paper.

Paper titles and original filenames

An uploaded PDF can have a paper title that differs from its filename. Distari uses trustworthy title information embedded in the PDF and may update the title later when it identifies a matching publication. The Library updates as that information arrives, including when Process after upload is off.

If no reliable title is available, the paper keeps its filename without the .pdf extension. Distari keeps the original filename in the paper’s Files tab.

To correct a title, open the paper, select Details, edit Title and select Save Title. A title you enter or correct is preserved during later automatic enrichment.

Decide when to process

Adding a paper is free and uses none of your plan’s usage. Distari reads the PDF’s text, imports its annotations, looks up its bibliographic details and extracts its embedded images for free. The summary, the reference list and the passage index that Ask uses for full text are made only when you ask: select Summarise this paper on the paper’s Summary tab, or Process in the Library for all of them at once. Until a paper is indexed, Ask answers from its abstract.

Processing runs in the background. The paper shows queued, running, completed, failed or waiting-for-credits states. You can leave the page and return later.

A project owner who wants every new paper summarised can turn on Process it straight away in the project’s processing settings; each new paper then uses the plan’s usage. You can still change the choice for one upload or import. Processing uses the project’s selected depth. If a paper has no available PDF, its bibliographic record is still useful in your library.

Follow a PDF as it arrives

During guided setup, the rail names the free add-time work:

Stage	What it does
Reading the text and its section headings	Reads selectable text and the paper’s structure.
Bringing in the PDF’s own highlights and notes	Imports annotations already saved in that PDF.
Filling in the title, authors and other details	Looks for bibliographic information for the record.
Preparing it for search	Prepares the paper for search; this does not start an AI summary.
Saving its figures and images	Keeps embedded images when they are available.

These can finish in the background after the guide moves on. An image stage may be omitted when it does not apply. The paid passage index used for full-text Ask, summaries, references and Figures and tables are separate actions that run when you request them.

Try the example paper

In the setup rail’s Add a paper step, Use an example paper adds a public research paper to your chosen project and continues into Library. Use it when you have no PDF ready, when a file cannot be read, or when uploads are paused. It does not start a paid AI action. The paper remains in your library after setup.

Move an existing library

In the Library, use File → Import BibTeX or RIS… or Add paper → Import file for a BibTeX, RIS or CSL-JSON export and an optional ZIP of PDFs, including a Mendeley export. Outside the Library, the File menu calls this Import library…. Preview reports matched PDFs, likely duplicates and errors before any paper is added. The confirmed import runs in the background; you can close the dialog and return to its progress and per-entry report. Existing papers are skipped, and a row that fails does not stop the others. Use File → Import from Zotero… for a Zotero account or RDF export. Integrations explains personal-library import, WebDAV limits and the availability of other providers.

For a large import, start without automatic PDF processing if you want to review the papers before using the project’s plan usage.