AI Summaries

Summaries are now called Summaries. Same tool, clearer name. A Summary is the structured written document, and every Summary ends with a summary section. Old links still work.

A Summary takes a topic that's scattered across slides, reports, and notes and pulls it into one focused, review-ready document. Scholarly reads your material, maps its structure, and writes a clean guide with clear sections, key terms, summaries, and review questions, so you spend your time learning the material instead of organizing it.

Study guides are built to reinforce understanding, not rote memorization. The AI pulls out the concepts and relationships that matter and leaves out the trivia, so the guide reflects how the material fits together.

When to Use a Summary

A summary is the right tool when you want to consolidate a whole topic into one document you can read, mark up, and return to. Reach for it when you're:

• Working through a full chapter, module, or unit before a certification sitting or an internal assessment.
• Pulling several reports or slide decks into a single coherent overview.
• Turning a dense PDF, a policy, a standard, a handbook section, into something scannable with headings, definitions, and recap questions.
• Building a printable handout the team can work from offline.

If you instead want a visual, branching overview of how ideas connect, generate a Mind Map. If you want to drill yourself with active recall, generate Flashcards. Many users do all three from the same source.

Coverage Is the Point

The failure mode of an AI summary is skipping things. A Summary is built to avoid exactly that:

• A section is planned for every section and topic in your source, rather than for whatever the first pass happened to find interesting.
• Each Summary is reviewed once, and any section that came back too thin, or missed a topic your source covers, is rewritten.
• The Summarized pages count on the document tells you how much of the source was covered, so coverage is a number you can check rather than a promise.

That review is why a Summary takes a few minutes rather than a few seconds. See How Scholarly Checks Its Own Work.

Every Summary Ends with a Study Guide

The last part of every Summary is a study guide section, the part you actually revise from:

• A review checklist of what you should be able to do.
• Questions with model answers, so you can check yourself rather than guess.
• Practice prompts for working with the material rather than re-reading it.

Quick Summary vs. Full Summary

Two different things share the word, and the difference matters:

If you started with a Quick summary and want the real thing, the Full Summary row on the Summary tab upgrades it in one tap, with no re-uploading and no re-picking pages.

Creating a Summary

Open Study guide from the tool row above the prompt box on Home, or from the New menu under Study. You can also start one from the AI creation actions on any source you already have open. The create window lets you build a guide from any of these starting points:

• Upload: Drag in PDFs, Word documents, or PowerPoints from your computer.
• Library: Pick a PDF you've already uploaded to Scholarly.
• Google Drive: Connect Google Drive and choose the exact files, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, PDFs, Word docs, PowerPoints, or text files, without downloading and re-uploading. See Uploading Content.
• Link: Paste a website or PDF URL and the AI pulls in the content.
• Prompt: Skip files entirely and just describe a topic, like "Study guide for cellular respiration with key terms and practice questions." Great for review when you don't have a source on hand yet.

You can combine sources, for example, pick two PDFs from your library and add a prompt to steer what to emphasize. For PDF sources, expand the file to pick a page range, so the guide covers exactly the chapters you need. The AI uses extracted text to locate relevant PDF pages, then reads those pages visually when needed so diagrams, equations, tables, and handwriting can inform the guide.

Customize before you generate

After choosing your sources, the customize step lets you shape the guide:

• Style: Pick how the guide is built:

• Language: Generate the guide in your preferred language.
• AI model: Some models are reserved for paid plans and show a lock badge. See Choosing an AI Model.
• Custom instructions: Free-text field to give specific directions, like "Add practice questions after each section" or "Emphasize the equations and keep it printable."

Every summary renders as a professionally typeset, print-ready PDF: the kind of clean handout a professor would give out, with proper headings, callout boxes, tables, and math, laid out in a clean, professional design.

Click Generate Summary and the work runs in the background: you can close the window and keep studying. You'll be notified when it's ready, and it appears under Background Tasks while it generates.

What you get

Downloads and printing require a paid plan. Viewing the result and sharing a view link are available on every plan.

Your finished summary is a downloadable PDF that lands in your library like any other content item. Open it and you can:

• Read and study it in the PDF viewer, with chat alongside to ask follow-up questions.
• Download it to keep or print.
• Share it with a link so colleagues or classmates can view it.
• Turn it into more study material: from the guide's follow-up actions you can spin up Flashcards, a quiz, a podcast, a video lecture, or AI Slides from the same content, no re-uploading required.

Because the output is a real PDF in your library, everything you can do with an uploaded PDF you can do with your summary. See the PDF guide for the full set of viewer and conversion options.

Tips

• Richer sources make deeper guides. A full lecture chapter produces a more detailed guide than a single slide; a one-line prompt produces a broad overview.
• Match the style to the goal. Use Exam Prep when you want high-yield, testable material front and center; use Comprehensive when you want full coverage of the topic.
• Steer it with custom instructions. Tell the AI to focus on specific chapters, lead with a glossary, keep the layout printable, or use the Keep it concise quick-insert chip for a shorter, faster-to-scan guide.
• Pair it with active recall. Reading a guide once is a start, convert it into flashcards or a quiz and test yourself to actually lock the material in.
• Keep guides in a folder. Group a topic's summary, flashcards, and source PDFs together so everything for it is in one place.

Frequently asked questions

What can I make a summary from?

Uploaded PDFs, Word docs, and PowerPoints; PDFs already in your library; Google Drive files; a website or PDF link; or just a typed prompt. You can mix several sources in one guide.

How long does it take?

Generation runs in the background and usually takes a few minutes. You don't need to wait on the screen, keep working and you'll be notified when it's ready.

Can I download or print my summary?

Yes, on a paid plan you can download or print the summary PDF. Every plan can view it in Scholarly and share a view link.

Can I turn a summary into flashcards or a quiz?

Yes. Because the guide lives in your library as a PDF, you can generate flashcards, quizzes, podcasts, video lectures, or AI slides from it, the same content, in a different study format.

What's the difference between a summary and a mind map?

A summary is a structured document, sections, definitions, summaries, and review questions, best for reading and reviewing. A mind map is a visual, branching diagram that shows how concepts connect at a glance. Both generate a downloadable PDF, and you can make both from the same source.

Is it free?

You can create summaries on the free plan using your shared lifetime AI Creation Credit. That free credit does not reset. Paid plans raise those limits and support longer source documents. Limits depend on your plan, see Plans and Limits.

Related

• Flashcards, turn the same source into a deck you can drill.
• Mind Maps, the same material as a one-page picture of how the ideas connect.
• Worksheets, practice problems with an answer key from the same sources.
• How Scholarly Checks Its Own Work: the coverage review behind every Summary.
• Plans and Limits, credits, source limits, and page ceilings by plan.