Chat with your PDFs and references, and click any citation to see the exact passage

What this solves

SmartChat is a chat over your own material. You upload an article, a thesis chapter, a spreadsheet or a BibTeX file, or ground the conversation in your Zotero library, and ask in plain language. You choose which of the nine models answers and which specialist mode it takes, from academic advisor to data analyst. The answer arrives with a numbered source and a page number, and clicking it opens the document at that passage, highlighted. You read the evidence, not only the summary.

How it works

1. 1

   Bring the material

   Drop a PDF, DOCX, TXT, CSV, XLSX or BibTeX file. SmartChat extracts the bibliographic record (title, authors, journal, year, DOI) and splits the text by page and section. You can also group sources in a project, sync a Zotero collection, or start with no document at all.

2. 2

   Choose who answers

   Pick one of the nine models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, and a specialist mode: Advisor, Writing Assistant, Critical Reviewer, Data Analyst or Librarian. Turn on web search when the answer will not be in the file. Both choices can change from one message to the next.

3. 3

   Ask, then check the citation

   Ask about the methodology and the retrieval favours the methodology section. Ask about results and it favours results, and a question about data analysis also favours passages that carry statistical terms. Each answer carries markers of source and page: click one and the PDF panel opens on that page with the quoted passage highlighted, so you confirm before citing it yourself.

Method

What happens to your file, step by step, and where the result stops being a decision made by a model.

What you get

• Citation that opens the page

  The answer cites source and page. Clicking navigates the built in PDF viewer to that page and highlights the passage the model used.

• Six ways of answering

  Default, Advisor, Writing Assistant, Critical Reviewer, Data Analyst and Librarian. Each mode loads its own set of instructions, so the same question comes back as mentoring, as criticism or as a statistical reading, depending on what you need.

• Web search at no extra credit

  When the answer is not in your file, SmartChat searches the web, ranks what it finds and cites it. A message with search on costs the same as any other message on that model.

• Nine models, three providers

  OpenAI, Google and Anthropic in the same conversation, from 5 credit models for routine questions to 20 credit ones for hard questions. If the model you chose fails, the fallback never bills above what you picked.

• It remembers what matters

  Preferences, working context and academic level are picked up as you talk and reused in later conversations. Everything it stored is listed in the settings panel, and you can edit or erase any of it.

Changelog

Every line below is a change that actually shipped, dated by the day it went out.

1. August 10, 2026 Latest

   • A model fallback can no longer bill more than the model you chose was priced at.
   • When only a costlier model can answer, SmartChat offers it instead of switching you silently.
   • Deep Research charges before saving the answer, so a failed charge delivers nothing and costs nothing.
   • The generic response error now appears in your interface language, not always in Portuguese.

Questions and answers

How to cite this tool

Used it in your research? Here is the reference, already filled in with the version you are looking at and today's access date.

@software{xploredados_smartchat_2026,
  author  = {Lessa, Patrick Wendell Barbosa},
  title   = {SmartChat},
  organization = {Xplore Dados},
  version = {2026.08},
  year    = {2026},
  url     = {https://xploredados.com/en/tool/smartchat},
  urldate = {2026-08-21}
}