ZETEYN   /zɛˈteɪn/  —  FROM ANCIENT GREEK ζητεῖν  ·  TO SEEK, TO INVESTIGATE

ZETEYN

AI can process a library overnight.
But the act of understanding — of genuinely knowing —
still belongs to you alone.

Launch App Read the Manual
Also available for macOS and Windows — local AI, no data leaves your machine.
What Zeteyn Is

Zeteyn takes its name from the ancient Greek zetein — to seek, to investigate with rigour, to pursue a question until it yields. A research environment built from the ground up for academic work. Not a chat window you paste questions into. Not a writing assistant that rewrites your arguments for you. A thinking environment where your ideas remain yours, every claim is anchored to its source, and the AI works at your direction — never ahead of it.

Every AI suggestion appears as a visible change you must approve. Every citation links back to the exact PDF paragraph. The argument structure, the intellectual ownership, the reasoning: all yours.

Why Researchers Switch

The problems every researcher knows

You did not choose this work because it was easy. You chose it because it matters. These tools should not make it harder.

The old way

"I have 200 PDFs, 3 years of notes, and no idea which claim is still supported."

With Zeteyn

Every snippet you save is a hard-linked citation. Click any reference in your manuscript and the PDF opens to the exact sentence. Your evidence never gets lost — it gets organized.

The old way

"The AI hallucinated three citations in my introduction. I didn't notice until my supervisor did."

With Zeteyn

Zeteyn's AI operates only on your uploaded sources. It cannot fabricate citations it has not seen. Every suggested claim is traceable to a document in your vault.

The old way

"I told ChatGPT my research question. By message 15, it had no idea what my thesis was about."

With Zeteyn

Your Research Anchor — your core question, confirmed findings, and methodological constraints — is kept in the AI's view for the entire session, every session. It never forgets your project.

The old way

"I use one tool to write, another to manage citations, another to read PDFs, another to run analysis."

With Zeteyn

Writing, evidence, PDF reader, data analysis, molecule viewer, and journal formatting all live in one window. Your manuscript and your sources are always side by side.

The old way

"Reviewer 2 has fourteen comments. I have no idea which parts of the manuscript they actually refer to."

With Zeteyn

Switch to Respond mode and drop the review PDF or screenshot. Zeteyn reads each comment, maps it to the relevant manuscript section, suggests a specific revision, and drafts your response letter — one item at a time, tracked like a checklist you can clear to green.

The old way

"I rewrote the discussion section and now my conclusions contradict what I wrote in Chapter 2."

With Zeteyn

Switch to Challenge mode and ask Zeteyn to audit Chapter 2 against the Discussion. It cross-checks each argument for internal contradictions, flags the conflicting locations, and tells you which claim needs to change. You decide which version of the argument survives.

Full Feature Set

Built for every stage of research.

Evidence Vault

Every Claim, Traced to Its Source

Most tools let you paste quotes. None of them remember where they came from.

Drag text from any PDF onto your draft. It becomes a live, clickable citation linked to the exact paragraph. Click it later — the PDF opens to that sentence automatically. No bibliography chase, ever.

Five AI Modes

A Different AI for Each Phase

A single chat mode cannot serve brainstorming, editing, responding to reviewers, and formal peer review equally well.

Brainstorm to develop ideas. Edit to refine prose with diff previews you approve. Respond to work through reviewer and supervisor comments item by item. Challenge to stress-test your own arguments adversarially. Peer Review to produce a formal structured report on an external paper.

Challenge Mode

Adversarial Review of Your Own Argument

You cannot reliably spot the weaknesses in your own thesis — you have been inside it too long.

Switch to Challenge and Zeteyn reads your manuscript as a hostile peer reviewer would. It audits every numerical claim for missing statistics, cross-checks citations against what the cited papers actually say, constructs counterarguments, and rates each issue Fatal, Major, or Minor. Also works on external papers you are critiquing.

Thought Log

Your Reasoning History, Preserved

Good thinking happens in conversation. It disappears when the chat window closes.

Save any exchange to your permanent Thought Log. When you return weeks later, your prior reasoning is intact — and the AI can search it when you ask a related question.

Project Memory

AI That Remembers Your Research Question

Generic AI tools reset after a few messages. Long projects need continuity.

Your Research Anchor — core question, confirmed findings, and what has been disproven — is pinned at the top of every session. The AI reads it first, every time.

Respond Mode

Turn Reviewer Comments into a Checklist

Fourteen reviewer comments. No clear path from comment to manuscript location, or to a coherent response letter.

Drop feedback in any form — PDF, screenshot, pasted email. Zeteyn extracts each comment, maps it to the relevant manuscript section, suggests a specific revision, and drafts your response letter as you resolve each item. Clear it to green.

Checkpoint Rollback

Undo Any Edit, Including the Conversation

Accepting an AI suggestion you regret means more than just undoing text — it means the AI's subsequent reasoning was based on a mistake.

Every significant edit creates an automatic checkpoint. Roll back to restore both the manuscript and the conversation state. The AI returns to a clean context, not a polluted one.

Science Workbenches

Data, Code, and Molecules In-Document

Copying a plot from Jupyter into Word is a workflow from 2005.

Run Python cells, render equations, view 3D molecular structures, and plot data directly inside your manuscript. Results are live SVGs — always publication-quality in the final export.

Zotero Integration

Your Existing Library, Immediately Available

You already have a Zotero library. Starting from scratch in a new tool is not an option.

Connect Zotero in Settings. Your full library syncs into the Evidence Vault. The AI can read your annotations and suggest relevant papers when you need them.

Journal Formatting

One Click to Submission-Ready

Reformatting a manuscript from Nature style to IEEE style takes an afternoon.

Switch journal templates from the Showroom. Margins, citation style, figure numbering, and typography update instantly. Submit the same paper to three journals without three days of reformatting.

Skills

Teach Zeteyn Your Standards

Every lab, every supervisor, every journal has conventions the AI does not know by default.

Create a Skill with your journal's style guide, your lab's terminology, or your supervisor's known preferences. The AI applies it automatically in every session, without being reminded.

Lab Bridge

Pull Simulation Results Directly into Your Draft

Your simulation results live on a cluster. Your manuscript lives on a laptop. Getting them in the same place takes a morning.

SSH into your lab computer or compute cluster from the Zeteyn status bar. New plots generated by your cluster appear in your Evidence Vault automatically.

How It Works

From first idea to final submission.

Every mode has a purpose. Together they cover the full arc of academic writing.

01
Brainstorm Mode
Develop ideas, build your evidence base.

You have raw notes, half-formed hypotheses, and a pile of PDFs. The AI asks questions, surfaces connections, and suggests which ideas are worth pursuing. When something is worth keeping, save it to your Thought Log or Evidence Vault with one click.

02
Edit Mode
Refine your manuscript, with full control.

The AI reads your current draft before every suggestion — it never works from memory or a stale version. Every proposed change appears as a diff you must approve. You can accept, reject, or adjust each one. Nothing changes without your confirmation.

03
Respond Mode
Turn reviewer feedback into a checklist.

Drop reviewer or supervisor feedback in any form — PDF, screenshot, pasted email. Zeteyn extracts each comment, maps it to the right section of your manuscript, suggests a specific revision, and drafts your Response Letter as you work through the list item by item. Clear each to green when resolved.

04
Challenge Mode
Stress-test your own arguments.

Switch to Challenge and ask Zeteyn to read your work as a hostile peer reviewer. It audits every numerical claim, cross-checks your citations against what the cited papers actually say, constructs counterarguments, and rates each issue Fatal, Major, or Minor. You decide what gets fixed and what gets defended.

05
Peer Review Mode
Generate formal journal-standard reviews.

Load an external paper and produce a structured peer review report. Zeteyn analyzes the manuscript, identifies strengths and weaknesses, rates severity of issues, and generates a recommendation (Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, Reject). Ready to export as PDF for journal submission.

Plans

Choose your plan.

Students and faculty with a valid .edu address receive 50% off all paid plans.

Free
$0

Everything you need to start. No credit card required.

  • 200 monthly AI credits
  • 5 GB Evidence Vault
  • All four AI modes
  • Thought Log & Checkpoint rollback
  • Zotero integration
Recommended
Pro
$20 /mo

For researchers working on long-form projects who need the full environment.

  • 1,500 monthly AI credits
  • 50 GB cloud-sync Vault
  • Priority support
  • And all the perks of Free
Launch Web App Download for macOS Download for Windows

Why download instead of using the web app? The desktop version runs a local AI model entirely on your own hardware. Your files never touch a server. Useful if you work in a high-security environment, need to draft offline, or want AI suggestions without network latency.

Questions

Frequently asked questions.

Is Zeteyn just another ChatGPT wrapper for academics?
No, and the difference is structural. Chat tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity treat each conversation as an isolated session — they have no knowledge of your manuscript, your sources, or what you concluded last week. Zeteyn is a persistent research environment. Your evidence vault, your thought log, your research anchor, and your manuscript are all in view for the AI at all times. It is not a chat tool marketed to researchers. It is a writing environment with a built-in AI that understands your project and changes its behaviour depending on whether you need to brainstorm, edit, respond to a reviewer, challenge your own argument, or produce a formal peer review report.
Will the AI change my writing without asking?
Never. Every AI suggestion appears as a visible diff — additions in one color, deletions in another. Nothing is applied to your manuscript until you click Accept on that specific change. You can approve some suggestions and reject others from the same AI response. The AI does not have write access to your manuscript; you do.
How does Zeteyn prevent hallucinated citations?
Zeteyn's AI is grounded in your Evidence Vault — the PDFs, snippets, and sources you have uploaded. When the AI references a claim, it cites a document that is actually in your vault, and you can click that citation to verify the original paragraph. The AI cannot invent a paper you do not have. It can only surface evidence you provided. If a claim cannot be supported by your vault, a well-configured AI will tell you so rather than fabricate a plausible-sounding reference.
Can I import my existing Zotero or Mendeley library?
Yes. Connect your Zotero account in Settings and your full library syncs into the Evidence Vault, including your annotations. If you use Mendeley or another reference manager, you can export a .bib file and import it directly — Zeteyn indexes every citation automatically. You do not need to start from scratch.
My institution has strict data policies. Is my research data safe?
Desktop version: Your files never leave your machine. The local AI model runs entirely on your hardware. There is no cloud sync unless you enable it. This is the option most suitable for sensitive research data, unpublished results, or high-security environments.

Web version: Files are stored in your private Vault, encrypted in transit and at rest. We do not use your content to train AI models. You can review our full data processing terms in the Data Processing Addendum linked in the footer.
I have never used a tool like this. How long does it take to learn?
Most researchers are productive within 15 minutes. You do not need any programming experience or familiarity with IDEs. The Manual walks you through five concrete steps: upload a PDF, save a snippet, write a sentence, ask a question, and export. Every feature is also accessible by just talking to the AI — you can describe what you want to do and it will do it, then show you where to find that action yourself next time.
What happens to my work if I stop paying?
Everything stays yours. Your manuscript, evidence vault, thought logs, and all settings remain on your machine (desktop) or can be exported before you cancel (web). You can export to Word, PDF, or LaTeX at any time, on any plan, including free. We do not hold your work hostage.
Who owns the copyright of work I write in Zeteyn?
You do, fully. Every change requires your explicit approval, which means every sentence in the final manuscript is one you chose to include. Zeteyn does not claim any rights over content created using the tool. For AI-assisted writing disclosure requirements at your institution, we recommend checking your specific policy — the relevant fact is that you reviewed and approved each suggestion.
How is this different from Overleaf, Notion, or Obsidian?
Overleaf is a collaborative LaTeX editor. Excellent for typesetting, not built for the writing and reasoning process. It has no evidence vault, no AI modes, and no adversarial argument checking.

Notion is a notes and project management tool. It does not understand academic argument structure, citation linking, or manuscript submission requirements.

Obsidian is a personal knowledge base. Powerful for notes, not designed for producing a publication-ready manuscript with source-grounded claims.

Zeteyn is designed specifically for the process of writing a research paper: from first reading to final submission, with five AI modes that cover brainstorming, editing, responding to reviewers, stress-testing your own arguments, and producing formal peer review reports.
Can I collaborate with my supervisor or co-authors?
Supervisor feedback is a first-class workflow in Respond mode: paste, type, or photograph their comments and Zeteyn maps each one to the relevant section of your manuscript, suggests a specific revision, and drafts a response for each point. Real-time co-authoring is on the roadmap. In the current version, you can share a read-only link to your manuscript or export to Word for tracked-changes collaboration in the traditional way.
Does it support math, chemistry, and scientific diagrams?
Yes. Type /tikz for diagrams, /molecule for a 3D molecular viewer (accepts SMILES notation), /data for a live Python cell (Matplotlib, NumPy, SciPy), and equations render inline with standard LaTeX syntax. Outputs are deterministic SVGs — they will look identical in your exported PDF as they do in the editor.
I switched AI tools before and lost everything. What makes this different?
Your files are stored in standard formats (Markdown, PDF, BibTeX). You can export at any time to Word, PDF, or LaTeX — no proprietary format lock-in. The desktop app stores everything locally. If you close your account, nothing is deleted until you delete it. We also keep checkpoint history so you can roll back to any prior version of your manuscript, separate from any cloud backup.
Contact

Get in touch.

Feature requests, questions, or feedback from researchers actively using Zeteyn carry the most weight. We read everything.