Papers

Academic papers (from arxiv, Nature, Science, bioRxiv, and similar journals) get special treatment in FeynmanLM. The app auto-detects them by URL and automatically fetches or locates the full PDF whenever possible.

How Papers Are Detected

FeynmanLM classifies a source as a paper in two steps:

Step 1 — URL detection. The URL is checked against known academic domains:

• arxiv.org, nature.com, science.org, cell.com
• biorxiv.org, medrxiv.org, plos.org
• pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• and other major journal publishers

Step 2 — LLM classification. Journals like Science and Nature publish both research papers and shorter editorial content (news articles, commentary, perspectives). These live on the same domain, so URL detection alone can't tell them apart. Before downloading a PDF, FeynmanLM sends the URL and title to a lightweight LLM call (Claude Haiku) that classifies the source as a paper or article. Editorial content is automatically moved to the Articles tab.

This also works in the other direction: if a web article turns out to be an academic paper (e.g., a preprint hosted on a personal blog), the LLM reclassifies it after fetching the content.

Adding a Paper

From Safari Reading List: Save the paper's abstract or landing page to Safari Reading List. The app picks it up automatically (articles added in the last 7 days are surfaced).

Manual paste: Open the Studio tab, paste the paper URL into the source bar, and press Return.

Via MCP: Your AI assistant can add papers using the add_source tool with source_type: "paper".

How PDF Loading Works

When you add a paper, FeynmanLM tries to get the full PDF automatically:

1. Local iCloud PDF: checks FeynmanLM/Papers/ in iCloud Drive
2. Direct fetch: downloads the PDF (works for open-access papers on arxiv, bioRxiv, PLOS, etc.)
3. PubMed Central (PMC): fetches the full text if available in PMC
4. Nature (MagicWord): uses institutional login if configured (Settings → Nature Access)

When a PDF is fetched, it's saved to iCloud Drive:

iCloud Drive → Documents → FeynmanLM → Papers

Dealing with Paywalled Papers

Open access (no action needed)

Papers on arxiv, bioRxiv, medrxiv, PLOS, and other open-access repositories are fetched automatically.

PubMed Central (PMC)

If a paper is in PMC (even if the publisher's version is paywalled), FeynmanLM detects this and fetches the PMC version automatically.

Other paywalled publishers

For papers behind paywalls:

1. Download the PDF from your institutional access.
2. Save it to the FeynmanLM/Papers/ folder in iCloud Drive.
3. The app matches it to the URL using fuzzy filename matching.

Tips

• Preprints are ideal: arxiv and bioRxiv papers are always freely accessible.
• Long papers: the app reads up to 100 pages / 50,000 characters.
• Scanned PDFs: prefer native PDFs over scans for better text extraction.