Guide Getting Started

Getting Started with Scholarly

Scholarly is an AI-powered study workspace. Bring your real materials — PDFs, lecture audio, notes, YouTube videos, websites, even pasted text — and turn them into flashcards, quizzes, notes, podcasts, video lectures, AI slides, mind maps, study guides, infographics, worksheets, editable library files, research reports, and more. Everything you upload or create can be analyzed, summarized, and turned into study materials by AI.

Home Page

The home page is your starting point. It pulls together every tool you can use and everything you've created:

  • AI tools grid -- One-click entry to every AI tool: chat, flashcards, PDF upload, Paste Text, AI Meeting Notes, podcasts, video lectures, AI slides, study guides, worksheets, mind maps, infographics, deep research, the five AI Agents, and more. Click any tile to jump straight into that create flow.
  • Pinned & Recents -- The items you've pinned sit at the top, with your most recently created or opened content right below so you can pick up where you left off.
  • Background tasks -- Active and completed generation tasks (video lectures, podcasts, flashcards, research) show their progress here — click any one to jump in.
  • Folders -- Organize your content into folders, with an AI Organizer suggestion when you have unsorted content to tidy up.

For the full tour, see Your Home and Library.

Creating Content

Flashcards

Create flashcards from a wide range of sources:

  • PDFs, text files, images, websites, YouTube videos, pasted text, and audio recordings
  • Use the flashcard creator on the home page or go through the upload modal
  • AI generates question-and-answer pairs from whatever source material you provide
  • Generating from a long PDF? Use the page selector to pick exactly which pages the cards come from — it's available in every AI create window
  • Or skip the AI: switch to Build Manually in the Create Flashcards window to type cards yourself, no daily limit

Pages and Notes

Pages are a rich text editor for your own notes. Features include:

  • AI autocomplete as you type
  • Tables, equations, and code blocks
  • Full formatting toolbar
  • Create flashcards, quizzes, research, and video lectures directly from your notes

PDFs

Upload any PDF (including scanned documents) and interact with it through AI chat. Ask questions about the content, request summaries, edit the document, or extract key points. Switch between the standard scrolling layout and a Slides view with a thumbnail sidebar -- and enter full-screen presentation mode with arrow-key and space-bar shortcuts.

When you build slides, video lectures, study guides, worksheets, infographics, or mind maps from a PDF, the AI uses extracted text to locate relevant pages, then reads those pages visually when needed. This helps diagrams, equations, tables, scans, and handwriting inform the result.

Video Lectures

Generate fully narrated, animated video lectures from your study materials:

  • PDFs, text files, images, or a text prompt
  • Includes animated scenes, illustrations, charts, and voice narration
  • Pick a video mode — Standard, Illustrated, Short, Math, Kids, or Freestyle (see Video Modes)
  • For full lecture modes, set the target runtime with the length slider — free plans stay on Auto (sized to your sources), while paid plans can dial in a specific target length up to about 15 minutes; Short is always its own approximately 30-second vertical format with no length control
  • Pick a quality — 480p, 720p (default), or 1080p Full HD (1080p is a paid upgrade; see Plans and Limits)
  • Add custom instructions to steer the lecture
  • Synced captions on every completed video
  • Interactive questions appear at key moments to test what you just learned — without interrupting playback

AI Slides

Generate slide decks from your material:

  • Up to 3 sources — PDFs, Word docs, PowerPoints, text files, or a pasted URL
  • Add custom instructions to guide the content
  • Output is a downloadable PDF slide deck that is visually checked for layout issues before delivery

AI Meeting Notes

Capture lectures and meetings in two ways:

  • Record live -- Use the in-browser recorder during a lecture or meeting
  • Upload audio -- Supports MP3, M4A, WAV, WebM, and OGG files

Recordings are automatically transcribed. Once transcribed, you can chat with the AI about the content and turn it into flashcards, a podcast, and more. See AI Meeting Notes.

Podcasts

Generate audio podcasts with multi-voice AI hosts from your existing materials:

  • PDFs, text files, images, videos, research sessions, or a text prompt
  • Choose from style presets: Conversational, Exam Prep, Deep Dive, or Quick Summary
  • Set a target length with the duration slider
  • Includes synced captions so you can read along while you listen

Research

AI-driven research that goes beyond simple search:

  • AI explores the web on your behalf
  • Asks you clarifying questions to narrow the scope
  • Produces cited reports with images and inline source pills so you can see where every claim came from
  • Use Add a file to have the research also produce downloadable files — a study guide, comparison table, CSV, timeline, or one-page summary

See Deep Research for the full guide.

AI Agents

Five agents each turn your material into a specific, structured document:

  • AI Timeline -- Events in order with dates and context. See Timelines.
  • AI SOP -- A step-by-step standard operating procedure. See SOPs.
  • AI Flowchart -- A visual decision or process flow. See Flowcharts.
  • AI Lesson Plan -- A ready-to-teach lesson structure. See Lesson Plans.
  • AI Outline -- A hierarchical outline of the material. See Outlines.

For an overview, see AI Agents.

Mind Maps, Study Guides, Infographics, and Worksheets

Turn your material into focused study artifacts, each delivered as a downloadable PDF:

  • Mind Maps -- A visual map of the key ideas and how they connect. See Mind Maps.
  • Study Guides -- A structured guide you can study from, pulled together from your sources. See Study Guides.
  • AI Infographics -- A one-page visual summary of a topic, with a study-guide PDF prepared alongside it. See Infographics.
  • Worksheets -- A printable problem set or quiz handout with answer space (and an answer key, if you want one). See Worksheets.

Create any of them from the Home page create tiles. They can be built from your uploaded material, library sources, connected Google Drive files, pasted links, pasted text, or a typed prompt. Typeset PDF documents — study guides, worksheets, lesson plans, outlines, SOPs, and timelines — come in four free design themes: Professional (default), Academic, Modern, and Playful.

More Creation Tools

  • AI Study Pack -- A bundle of study materials built from one source in a single run. See AI Study Pack.
  • AI Spreadsheet -- Structured data tables built from your material or a prompt. See Spreadsheets.
  • AI Story Book -- An illustrated storybook that explains a topic. See Story Books.
  • AI Essay Writer -- A drafted essay grounded in your sources. See AI Essay Writer.
  • AI Image Playground -- Generate and edit images from prompts. See AI Image Playground.
  • Practice Exam -- A full-length, timed, graded test without opening a deck. See Quizzes and Exams.

Library Files

Any text or data the AI creates for you — notes, outlines, CSVs, JSON, code, diagrams, calendars — can be saved as a real, editable file in your library. Open the file's own page to preview it, edit it inline, chat with it, or reuse it as a source for any of the AI tools above. See Library Files.

Adding Your Material

You can add sources in several ways:

  • Drag and drop files anywhere on the page, or click the Upload button.
  • Paste text -- Paste notes, a transcript, or an article into the Paste Text tab and it becomes a source like any file. See Paste Text.
  • Paste a link -- Website URLs and YouTube links work as sources too.
  • Google Drive -- Pick files straight from Drive in any create window. See Connected Apps.

Supported file types: PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoints, images, text files, and audio files.

After uploading, you are prompted with follow-up actions:

  • Ask AI -- Chat with the uploaded content
  • Create Flashcards -- Generate flashcards from the file
  • Create Quiz -- Build a quiz based on the material
  • Create Podcast -- Turn the content into a multi-voice podcast
  • Create Video Lecture -- Generate a narrated video lecture
  • Create AI Slides -- Generate a slide deck

When you choose to create a podcast, video lecture, or slide deck, a customization panel appears so you can configure the output before generating. See the Uploading Content guide for full details.

AI Chat

Click Chat in the sidebar to use AI Chat. Ask questions, get explanations, link your PDFs and notes with @, switch models, retry a reply with a different model, and ask it to build flashcards, podcasts, video lectures, slide decks, or a deep research report — all without leaving the conversation. When you chat with a source, one-click suggestions can build Flashcards, a Practice Quiz, or a Study Guide straight from the conversation. You can also have a spoken conversation in Voice Mode. See AI Chat and Voice Mode.

Quizzes and Exams

Every flashcard deck comes with a Quiz tab (mixed question types with AI feedback) and an Exam tab (timed, graded tests). For a full-length test without opening a deck, use the Practice Exam action on the home page. See Quizzes and Exams.

  • Sidebar -- Browse your pages and folders in the left sidebar
  • Create menu -- Open the + New menu for every create option, split into Create with AI and Blank tabs — blank starts (a flashcard deck, spreadsheet, or PDF) skip AI generation entirely
  • Home -- Track background tasks (video lectures, podcasts, flashcards, research) and jump to completed or in-progress items
  • Pinning -- Pin any content to the sidebar for quick access
  • Command palette -- Press Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K on Windows) to search across PDFs, decks, pages, meeting notes, podcasts, video lectures, slides, research, and chats. See Command Palette.
  • AI Organizer -- One-click way to tidy your library: AI scans your unsorted items and suggests folders. See AI Organizer.
  • Background tasks -- Long creations (video lectures, podcasts, slides, research) keep generating after you close the window. See Background Tasks.
  • Report Bug -- Click the Report Bug button in the header to report issues directly to the team

Folders

Folders let you group related content together. You can:

  • Create folders from the home page or sidebar
  • Drag and drop any content item into a folder
  • Nest content however you prefer to keep things organized
  • Use AI Organizer to let AI analyze your unfoldered content and suggest how to organize it
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