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Research Paper Reading Agent

The agent walks you through a paper section by section and builds a glossary.

Intermediate16h1–2 people17/20 fit
TL;DR

Build Research Paper Reading Agent for students and researchers in ~16h with 1–2 people. Stack: MarkItDown + RAG + LLM + KaTeX.

Why it wins: Combines RAG and tutoring with clear value for students.

Build flow

01 · Problem
Dense papers stall readers on unknown terms and missing background.
02 · Solution
The agent splits the paper, explains each section at the reader's level, builds a running glossary and answers questions grounded in the paper.
03 · Build
  1. 1Convert the PDF to Markdown
  2. 2Chunk by section
  3. 3Explain each section on demand
  4. 4Track glossary terms
04 · Demo
Open a well-known ML paper and ask what a confusing equation means.

MVP checklist

  • Section-by-section guide
  • Level slider
  • Running glossary
  • Grounded Q&A

Tech stack

TechRole
MarkItDownDocs to Markdown for LLMs
RAGRetrieval over your docs
LLMLanguage model
KaTeXMath rendering

Reference repos

Open-source projects you can build on. Links checked 2026-10-31.

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