Research by UNMS

Research is a simple, beautiful desktop app for reading and thinking through research papers. You can upload PDFs, highlight, take notes, and use AI to summarize and connect ideas, built for anyone who wants to actually engage with what they read.

Get to know Research by UNMS

Hey, I’m Udara – maker of Research, Pile and Distill.

I've always been into a bunch of things. Growing up, I loved computers and creative work – taught myself design and code through online communities. I also loved science, so I studied bioinformatics in university, which let me blend both interests.

After graduating, I launched Clew, which built collaborative tooling for digital work. I worked on it for a few years before we were acquired by Dropbox, where we worked on incubating new products. After that, I wanted to get back to making things of my own, so I took a break and started building a few tools I wanted to use at the time.

That's how Research happened. I wasn't trying to build a company – I just wanted a better way to read research papers. Something simple, beautiful, and worth coming back to.

What’s Research and what’s so cool about it?

Research is a clean, focused desktop app for reading and thinking through research papers.

If you’ve ever tried to build a habit around reading technical PDFs, you probably know the pain: they’re dense, isolating, and hard to come back to. Tools like Zotero are great for reference management, but not for actually engaging with what you read.

Research is different. You drop in a paper, and it gives you space to read, annotate, highlight, but also to ask questions, reflect, and even chat with the content. The AI helps where it makes sense: summarizing, surfacing related entries, guiding you back to ideas you’ve touched before. It’s the kind of tool that quietly supports you without getting in the way.

The app is built for people like me: people who read a lot, think across topics, and need a place to connect ideas. It’s designed to feel like a quiet, earthy workspace. You can open multiple windows, each paper color-coded for quick context. The palette is soft, the layout is simple, and everything is focused on keeping you in flow.

Tool Stack of Research by UNMS

Research is built with Tauri. I moved away from Electron for this one. I love Tauri’s plugin system and the way it integrates with Rust. It’s cross-platform, lightweight, and surprisingly ergonomic once you get used to the v2 documentation. And it doesn’t bundle Chromium, which helps keep the app small and responsive.

On the frontend, I use React. For the backend, I run Laravel and Rails – I bounce between the two depending on the project. I’ve always been drawn to their structure, readability, and developer experience. Laravel, in particular, is something I’ve been using since I was first learning to build full-stack apps.

For LLM features, I mostly use OpenAI models: their tooling is solid, and they cover most use cases well. For longer documents or research-heavy tasks, I sometimes switch to Gemini, since it handles larger context windows better. I’ve also been experimenting with local models like DeepSeek for more self-contained workflows.

Do you use any other tools to run the business?

I try to keep things simple. Most of my design happens directly in code, I don’t use Figma much anymore. I used to design in Photoshop as a kid, so over time I built up the muscle memory to sketch UI straight into a code editor.

For feedback and lightweight analytics, I use my own internal tool called Signal. You’ll see it embedded inside Research, it helps me collect direct user feedback and summarizes it for me using AI.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I’m working on something new, a kind of journal-meets-agent experience called Distill. It builds on what I learned from Pile and Research, but with a more proactive AI layer. Think: a private space where you’re surrounded by your thoughts and a few configurable AIs that help move things forward: remembering tasks, surfacing ideas, following up.

In the meantime, if you spend your days reading research papers, long docs, or dense materials, give Research a try. It might be just the companion you’ve been missing.

Research by UNMS updates

Noteworthy updates to Research by UNMS since this story went live.

Dec 26, 2025
Research is out of beta releasing v1 to the public
Research is officially out of beta. After a year of iteration, the beautifully designed AI-powered app for reading and analyzing research papers is now available to everyone.

Dec 8, 2025
Udara launches Distill in beta
Udara, the creator of Research and Pile, has launched Distill in beta – a neat AI-powered app that helps you capture your thinking and lets intelligent agents organize and enhance it. A fresh, well-crafted take on personal knowledge and productivity. Available for iOS and macOS in beta.