AI Tools Radar | Lab Intelligence Hub

📰 Daily Research Brief

2026-04-05

🔶

Signals – finding the most informative agent traces without LLM judges

Shared on Hacker News Show HN. Hey HNSalman, Shuguang and Adil here from Katanemo Labs (a DigitalOcean company).Wanted to introduce our latest research on agentic systems called Signals. If you've been buil

Hacker News · 2026-04-05

🔶

Travel Hacking Toolkit – Points search and trip planning with AI

Shared on Hacker News Show HN. I use points and miles for most of my travel. Every booking comes down to the same decision: use points or pay cash? To answer that, you need award availability across multiple pro

Hacker News · 2026-04-04

🔶

I made open source, zero power PCB hackathon badges

Shared on Hacker News Show HN. I love getting cool swag from hackathons and I also love designing PCB's, so when my friend asked me if I would design hackathon badges for a large game jam in singapore, I wa

Hacker News · 2026-04-04

🔶

I built a frontpage for personal blogs

Shared on Hacker News Show HN. With social media and now AI, its important to keep the indie web alive. There are many people who write frequently. Blogosphere tries to highlight them by fetching the recent post

Hacker News · 2026-04-03

🔶

Mtproto.zig – High-performance Telegram proxy with DPI evasion

Shared on Hacker News Show HN. Hey everyone. I built an MTProto proxy for Telegram aimed at bypassing active DPI censorship like the Russian TSPU. I chose Zig because it's perfect for writing fast network d

Hacker News · 2026-04-03

⭐ Featured Tools

Curated AI-powered research tools for the lab — updated daily

Elicit

AI research assistant that automates paper discovery, data extraction, and literature synthesis across 138M+ papers and 545K clinical trials.

🔧 Literature Search & Review Freemium 📅 2026-03-25

🔗 Try Elicit →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

Search 138M+ papers with natural language queries

📊

Auto-extract structured data into comparison tables

📝

Generate research reports with sentence-level citations

🔬

Systematic review: screen up to 5,000 papers automatically

🔔

Real-time research alerts for new publications

💬

Chat with full-text papers via AI

🎯 Best Use Cases

Systematic reviews, evidence matrices, synthesizing findings across dozens of papers. Weeks of work reduced to hours.

📖 How to Get Started

Enter a research question

Review AI-ranked results

Extract structured data into columns

Generate a research report

Export to RIS/CSV/BIB/PDF

💰 Pricing

Basic (Free)

2 reports/month, unlimited search & summaries

Plus ($7/month)

4 reports/month, export to RIS/CSV/BIB/PDF/DOCX

Pro ($29/month)

Systematic review workflow, 12 reports/month, API access

Scale ($49/month)

Team collaboration, figure extraction, 20 reports/month

Connected Papers

Visual tool to explore and discover academic papers through an interactive graph of related works.

🔧 Literature Search & Review Freemium 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try Connected Papers →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

Visual graph showing relationships between papers

📊

Discover prior and derivative works from a seed paper

📝

See citation connections at a glance

🔬

Build a literature map for any research topic

🔔

Integration with Semantic Scholar database

🎯 Best Use Cases

Discovering related papers you didn't know to search for; building a complete picture of a research field from one key paper.

📖 How to Get Started

Enter a key paper title or DOI

Explore the visual graph

Click nodes to read abstracts

Build your reading list

Export references

💰 Pricing

Free

5 graphs/month

Pro ($3/month)

Unlimited graphs, priority processing

Consensus

AI-powered search engine for scientific papers with evidence-based consensus scores and inline citations.

🔧 Literature Search & Review Freemium 📅 2026-03-25

🔗 Try Consensus →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

Search 200M+ scientific papers with natural language

📊

Consensus Meter shows agreement/disagreement across studies

📝

AI-generated summaries with inline citations

🔬

Filter by study type (RCT, meta-analysis, etc.)

🔔

Extract key findings, methods, and outcomes

💬

Save and organize papers in personal library

🎯 Best Use Cases

Quick evidence-based answers to yes/no questions (e.g., 'Does X cause Y?') and understanding scientific consensus on a topic.

📖 How to Get Started

Ask a comparative or yes/no question

View Consensus Meter

Read AI summary with citations

Explore individual papers

Save to library

💰 Pricing

Basic (Free)

Unlimited search, 5 Consensus answers/month

Pro ($15/month)

Unlimited answers, advanced filters, citations export

Team (Custom)

Collaborative workspace, API access

NotebookLM

Google's AI notebook that lets you upload research documents and chat with them to extract insights.

🔧 Reading & Note-Taking Free 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try NotebookLM →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

Upload PDFs, docs, and web pages as sources

📊

AI answers grounded strictly in your uploaded sources

📝

Generate summaries, study guides, and briefing docs

🔬

Audio Overview: converts notes to podcast-style discussion

🔔

Inline citations linking answers to source passages

💬

Collaborative notebooks

🎯 Best Use Cases

Deep reading of multiple papers simultaneously; preparing for presentations; generating study materials from a pile of documents.

📖 How to Get Started

Create a notebook

Upload PDFs or paste URLs

Ask questions about the sources

Generate structured notes

Share notebook with collaborators

💰 Pricing

Free

Full access, up to 50 sources per notebook

NotebookLM Plus (via Google One)

5x usage limits, customization

Overleaf

Cloud-based LaTeX editor with real-time collaboration — the standard platform for scientific manuscript writing.

🔧 Academic Writing Freemium 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try Overleaf →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

Real-time collaborative LaTeX editing

📊

10,000+ academic templates (IEEE, APA, Nature, etc.)

📝

AI writing assistant (grammar, rewrite)

🔬

Git integration for version control

🔔

Direct journal submission (many publishers)

💬

Compile and preview PDF instantly

🎯 Best Use Cases

Writing conference papers, journal articles, and theses collaboratively; managing complex LaTeX documents for STEM publications.

📖 How to Get Started

Choose a template for your target journal

Write in LaTeX editor

Real-time preview on the right

Invite co-authors

Submit directly to journal

💰 Pricing

Free

Unlimited projects, basic collaboration (1 collaborator)

Standard ($21/month)

Unlimited collaborators, Dropbox sync, track changes

Professional ($42/month)

Priority compile, advanced reference search

Perplexity AI

AI-powered answer engine with real-time web search, academic mode, and cited responses.

🔧 AI Search & Discovery Freemium 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try Perplexity AI →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

Real-time web search with cited sources

📊

Academic mode focuses on scholarly sources

📝

Deep Research: 30-min automated deep dives

🔬

Follow-up questions to drill into topics

🔔

File and image upload for analysis

💬

Spaces for organizing research threads

🎯 Best Use Cases

Getting a quick, cited overview of any topic; preliminary research before diving into full papers; fact-checking claims with sources.

📖 How to Get Started

Type your research question

Switch to Academic focus

Read cited answer

Click sources to verify

Use Deep Research for comprehensive reports

💰 Pricing

Free

Unlimited basic searches, 5 Pro searches/day

Pro ($20/month)

Unlimited Pro searches, Deep Research, file uploads

ResearchRabbit

Free AI-powered tool to discover, organize, and visualize academic literature with personalized recommendations.

🔧 Literature Search & Review Free 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try ResearchRabbit →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

AI-powered paper recommendations based on your library

📊

Interactive citation network visualization

📝

Personalized email digests of new papers

🔬

Zotero integration for seamless reference management

🔔

Collaborative collections with teammates

💬

100% free for researchers

🎯 Best Use Cases

Building a comprehensive literature collection; staying updated on new publications in your field; collaborative literature reviews.

📖 How to Get Started

Add seed papers to a collection

Explore AI recommendations

Visualize the citation network

Sync with Zotero

💰 Pricing

Free (Always)

Unlimited collections, recommendations, Zotero sync

SciSpace (formerly Typeset)

AI copilot for reading research papers — explains complex concepts, math, and tables in plain language.

🔧 Reading & Note-Taking Freemium 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try SciSpace (formerly Typeset) →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

AI explanations of complex text, equations, and tables

📊

Highlight any text to get instant AI explanation

📝

Search 270M+ papers with semantic understanding

🔬

Generate literature review summaries

🔔

Chrome extension works on any research website

💬

Multi-paper chat and comparison

🎯 Best Use Cases

Understanding difficult papers outside your expertise; quickly extracting methods and results; building lit reviews with minimal manual effort.

📖 How to Get Started

Open a paper on SciSpace or use the Chrome extension

Highlight any confusing text

Get instant AI explanation

Ask follow-up questions

Export notes

💰 Pricing

Free

20 AI questions/month

Premium ($12/month)

Unlimited questions, literature review generation

Semantic Scholar

Free AI-powered research tool from Allen Institute for AI — searches 214M papers with semantic understanding.

🔧 Literature Search & Review Free 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try Semantic Scholar →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

214M+ academic papers across all fields

📊

AI-generated TLDRs (Too Long Didn't Read) for papers

📝

Semantic search beyond keyword matching

🔬

Citation graphs and influential citations

🔔

Research feeds and personalized alerts

💬

Open API for developers

🎯 Best Use Cases

Deep literature discovery; finding influential papers; getting quick TLDRs of papers before reading in full.

📖 How to Get Started

Search by topic, title, or author

Read AI-generated TLDR

Explore citation context

Set up research alerts

Use API for advanced workflows

💰 Pricing

Free (Always)

Full access to all features and API

Zotero

Free, open-source reference manager with powerful AI plugins for summarization and smart organization.

🔧 Reference Management Free 📅 2026-03-28

🔗 Try Zotero →

🔑 Key Features

🔍

One-click save from any browser (journals, Google Scholar, etc.)

📊

AI-powered PDF summarization via ZoteroGPT plugin

📝

Smart full-text search across your library

🔬

Automatic citation style formatting (9,000+ styles)

🔔

Group libraries for team collaboration

💬

Free unlimited storage for references

🎯 Best Use Cases

The backbone of any research workflow — collecting, organizing, and citing papers. AI plugins add summarization on top of the classic tool.

📖 How to Get Started

Install Zotero + browser extension

Click extension to save papers

Install ZoteroGPT for AI summaries

Generate bibliography in any citation style

Sync across devices

💰 Pricing

Free

Unlimited references, 300MB file storage

Storage plans ($20-120/year)

6GB to unlimited file storage