Sidenote: AI Reading Assistant with Citations

Sidenote is an AI reading assistant that lives in Firefox's sidebar and answers questions about whatever you're reading: a PDF, a web article, a YouTube video, an email in Gmail or Outlook, or a document in a connected account. Every answer carries numbered citations, and clicking one scrolls the page to the exact source passage and highlights it, so you can check any claim in one click instead of taking the AI's word for it.

Stop skim-reading and stop second-guessing AI answers. Open the sidebar on any document and Sidenote will summarise it at the length you choose, chat with it, explain the hard parts at the reading level you pick, build a glossary of its jargon, and turn it into flashcards and a quiz. Whatever it tells you, it shows you where it came from.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Open the sidebar with the toolbar icon or Ctrl+Shift+S (Cmd+Shift+S on Mac).
2. Load what you're reading: Sidenote detects the page, PDF, video or email on screen, and one click brings it in.
3. Summarise, ask, explain, define or quiz. Every answer arrives with citation chips: click one and the source passage lights up on the page.

READS THE DOCUMENTS YOU ALREADY USE • Open it on a PDF to read research papers, journal articles, reports, contracts and manuals. Works in the browser's built-in PDF viewer and in Sidenote's own viewer, with page-accurate citations either way. • Read scanned PDFs too: OCR is built in, so a scanned contract, an old paper or a photographed handout becomes searchable, summarisable text whose citations still land on the right spot on the page. • Read PDFs a site shows inside its own in-page viewer, the kind that never gets its own web address, and PDFs behind a sign-in, which load through your existing browser session. • Summarise any web page or long article: news, documentation, blog posts and help centres. Sidenote extracts the readable article and works from that. • Open a YouTube video and work from its transcript instead of scrubbing through it. Summarise the video, ask questions about it and build a glossary, with every citation carrying a timestamp: click a chip and the player seeks to the exact moment. • Summarise a Gmail thread where it sits, and read the documents attached to it without downloading them first. A message carrying several files lets you pick one, and a saved attachment links back to the email it came from. • Do the same in Outlook: open a message on Outlook.com or a work or school account and read both the message and its attachments through your Microsoft connection. • Open a file stored in Google Drive and read it in place, whether you open it in its own tab or preview it from the file list. Files shared with you work the same way, and pasting a Drive link brings in a file you haven't opened yet. • Ask questions about a Google Doc: read-only, captured with Google's own typesetting so columns, fonts and drawings match the document exactly, and cited to the exact passage. Documents with multiple tabs ingest every tab. • Read your team's Confluence wiki straight from the browser with no admin install, or index a whole space at once and ask questions across all of it (space indexing on Pro+ and above). • Chat with the Notion pages you connect, and summarise them in a click. • Work with Word files and slide decks stored in Microsoft SharePoint or OneDrive, read through Microsoft Graph. • Bring in a Slack canvas your team is working from. • Read any public article or PDF by pasting its link, even when the page you're on isn't one Sidenote can open directly. Scanned PDF links go through OCR automatically. • Upload your own files too: Word documents and PowerPoint decks render as true print-quality pages, so what you cite is what the document actually looks like (paid tiers).

WHAT IT DOES • Summarise with citations: TL;DR bullets, a tight standard summary, or a structured deep-read of the whole document. Every key point carries a numbered chip that scrolls to its source, and your first document summarises itself so you see the product working immediately. • Chat with citations: ask anything about the document and watch the answer stream in. Click a citation chip and the page jumps to the highlighted passage, and a cited-passage card in the panel shows the exact quote with the cited lines marked, a Show on page button, and one-click save to notes. • Ask follow-ups faster: suggested follow-up questions appear under each answer, one tap each. • Explain simply: select a dense passage and have it rewritten at the reading level you choose, from plain language to expert, without losing accuracy. • Build a glossary: jargon, acronyms and proper nouns defined from the passages where they appear, each definition cited back to its context. • Study from any document: turn it into a study pack of flashcards and a self-marking quiz, with every card citing the passage it came from (paid plans, in the dashboard). • Listen instead of reading: summaries, chat answers and explanations can be read aloud. • Dictate your questions: a microphone button turns your speech into text on your device. • Save highlights as notes: right-click any quote to keep it with your own comment and a jump back to its exact spot, then search your notes across quotes and comments alike. • Find in the document: search inside the open document and jump to every occurrence with the same scroll-and-highlight as a citation. Nearby repeats share one row, so the match count means distinct places in the document. • Search your library by meaning: find saved documents by what they say, not just their titles, with stars, tags and filters to keep a growing library organised. • Ask your whole library: a question box that answers across everything you've saved, not just the open document, and each citation names the document it came from and opens it (Pro and above). • Collections: group documents from different tools into one workspace and ask a single question across all of them; the answer cites which document said what. In the dashboard, turn a collection into a verified research report with click-to-highlight citations, or an answer grid that puts up to 8 questions to every document at once (paid plans). • Share what you found: send a summary, a chat thread, a single answer or a glossary as a link that shows a frozen snapshot, with per-link view counts and one-click revoke. • Answer in your language: summaries, chat, explanations and glossaries in any of 17 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Hindi and Arabic, while quoted passages stay in their original wording so citations still match the document. • Right-click anywhere: Explain selection, Ask about it, Save highlight, or Summarise this page, straight from the context menu. • Export everything: summaries, chat threads and glossaries as Markdown or CSV, or one combined export pack per document, delivered through the browser's download manager. • Know where you stand: usage meters on Chat and Summarise show how much of your monthly allowance is left, and calibrated progress bars estimate how long a build will take.

WHO IT'S FOR • Students: summarise lecture slides and textbook chapters, build glossaries for a new subject, turn readings into flashcards and quizzes, and revise from cited notes instead of rereading everything. • Researchers and academics: get through papers faster, keep a cited trail from claim to source, search your reading by meaning, and put one question to a whole collection of literature. • Analysts, lawyers and consultants: pull the load-bearing clauses out of contracts and reports, verify every AI claim against the document before it goes into your own work, and export cited summaries colleagues can check. • Teams: share collections, reports and cited answers, index the team wiki, and stop paying for a separate AI seat inside every tool you use. • Non-native readers: have a dense document explained at a gentler reading level, get answers in your own language, and listen to summaries and explanations read aloud.

WHY SIDENOTE IS DIFFERENT • Citation-first by design: the model is required to cite the passages it used, and the server checks every quoted citation against the document before you see it. A claim the source does not support loses its citation, and if the document doesn't answer your question, Sidenote says so plainly. No silent hallucinations. • Citations that actually land: the highlighter opens collapsed sections to reach a passage, sees through modern web-component pages, survives pages that change after you save them, and waits to confirm the passage is really on screen before calling it done. On YouTube the citation is a timestamp; in a PDF it is the exact sentence on the exact page. • One assistant across every tool: most AI add-ons are locked to a single platform and sold per seat. Sidenote reads your PDFs, your email, your wikis and your cloud documents from one place, for one subscription.

PRIVATE BY DESIGN • We never train AI models on your documents, and analytics never runs on your signed-in dashboard. • Data is stored in a UK region and encrypted at rest. Connected accounts are read-only, and disconnecting one deletes its tokens immediately. • You choose retention per document: keep it to re-open later, or have it deleted within 24 hours. • Delete your account and every stored document yourself, any time, from the dashboard. • Sign in with a magic link. No passwords, no third-party trackers, no ads.

WHAT'S NEW IN 3.0 • A reworked citation engine: clicks now pay off on web-component sites, in the built-in PDF viewer, from documents opened out of your library, and on pages that changed since you saved them. • A cited-passage card on every citation click, so the click is useful even where the page itself can't be highlighted. • Sign-in-protected PDFs load through your existing browser session. • Read-aloud on answers and explanations, follow-up question chips, usage meters, and a first document that summarises itself.

COMMON QUESTIONS Q: Does it work on scanned PDFs and photocopies? A: Yes. OCR is built in, so a scanned contract, an old paper or a photographed handout becomes searchable text, and its citations still point at the right place on the page.

Q: Do the citations really point at the source? A: Yes, and they are checked. The server verifies every quoted citation against the document before you see it, a claim the source does not support loses its citation, and clicking a chip scrolls to and highlights the passage on the page. If nothing in the document answers your question, Sidenote tells you that instead of guessing.

Q: Is there a free plan? A: Yes, free forever: a monthly allowance of documents, summaries, cited chat turns, explanations and glossaries. The 7-day Pro trial unlocks everything with no card required.

Q: Will my documents be used to train an AI model? A: No, never. Your data is stored encrypted in a UK region, connected accounts are read-only, and you can delete individual documents or your whole account yourself at any time.

Q: Does it work on documents behind a sign-in? A: Yes, for pages and PDFs you can already open in your browser. Sidenote reads them through your existing session, and nothing is captured until you explicitly load a document with the panel open.

Q: What languages can it answer in? A: 17: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hindi and Arabic. Quoted passages stay in the original language so citations still match the document.

Q: Which browsers does it work in? A: Firefox, Chrome and Microsoft Edge, plus the web dashboard at getsidenote.app. Your library, notes and collections stay in sync through your account.

GET MORE FROM SIDENOTE • Reopen a document and the panel remembers the tool you last used on it. • Pause Sidenote on sites you never want it to read, per site. • Select several library documents at once to tag, export or delete them together. • Choose a light, dark or system theme, and drive the whole panel from the keyboard.

TRY IT BEFORE YOU SIGN IN Open the sidebar and a guided demo runs on a sample document before you create an account: a cited summary, scripted questions and a glossary, with real click-to-highlight citations. When you sign in, everything you save syncs to a full web dashboard at getsidenote.app with the same viewer, citations, collections, sharing and exports.

PRICING • Free forever: a monthly allowance of documents, summaries, cited chat turns, explanations and glossaries. • 7-day Pro trial: every feature, no card required. • Pro plans from £10/month: higher monthly limits, multi-document collections and saved thread history. The top tiers unlock our most capable model and bigger uploads. Full limits: https://getsidenote.app/pricing

QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK We read everything: support@getsidenote.app

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