RQuest is a local‑first research workspace that carries your work through every stage — questions, sources, evidence, synthesis, claims, arguments, drafting, peer review, revision — as one connected, researcher‑owned vault. Not a document. A process.
Reference manager, PDF reader, notes app, spreadsheet, word processor, submission portal, inbox. Every handoff between them is a place where the reasoning behind your work quietly falls out.
"Your research has a life beyond RQuest."
The vault — plain files on your disk — is the source of truth. RQuest builds search indexes, embeddings, and a research graph on top of it, but those are derived, reconstructable representations. Delete the database and RQuest rebuilds it. Delete RQuest and your research remains.
This is the order research actually moves through — including backward, when a reviewer sends you back to stage four. Scroll to see the full arc.
Six capabilities that fall out of treating research as a connected system, rather than a folder of files.
Every claim traces back to the exact passage it came from. Ask "what supports this?" and get an answer, not a citation you have to re‑verify yourself.
A research‑native matrix of method, framework, findings, and limitations — a live view of your sources, not a spreadsheet that drifts out of date.
Develop claim, reason, evidence, and counterargument before you write a single paragraph of prose that has to sound convincing.
Reviewer comments attach to the claim or argument they challenge, with your decision — accept, clarify, disagree, defer — recorded alongside it.
Ten years on, ask why you chose a methodology or rejected an interpretation — and get the actual answer, preserved in the vault.
AI operates over material you select and shows its work. No AI, local AI, or your own key — RQuest stays useful with AI turned off entirely.
"Write this paragraph."
"Is this paragraph justified by the evidence?"
AI should help the researcher think, not replace the researcher thinking. It compares, questions, and surfaces contradictions — grounded in material you chose, never fabricating a connection you didn't ask it to find.
Each of these describes a real capability inside RQuest. None of them describes the product.
The software serves the researcher.
The application should never own the research.
Claims connect to their supporting basis.
A source without context is not enough.
Meaning comes from connections, not accumulation.
The researcher stays responsible for interpretation.
It questions, compares, and supports — it doesn't decide.
Going backwards is normal, not a failure.
Criticism feeds back into the research structure.
The project is larger than the manuscript.
Research should stay understandable years later.
You own the vault. RQuest owns the environment.
RQuest is in early access for researchers, labs, and PhD supervisors. Bring one project — arrive with the vault it deserves.