About Folio
Serious research deserves a serious workspace.
Folio brings discovery, reading, citation, writing, integrity, and synthesis into one place, so the only thing between you and a finished, defensible manuscript is the thinking.
Why we exist
Researchers don't lack tools. They drown in them.
A reference manager in one window, a pile of PDFs in another, a word processor that treats citations as an afterthought, and a browser with forty tabs of half-read papers. Nothing spans the whole job, so the researcher becomes the integration layer, copying and reformatting and re-checking by hand.
Then generative AI made it worse before it made it better. Fabricated citations, invented quotes, and a creeping doubt about whether any given paragraph is defensibly your own. In academic work, where a wrong citation is an embarrassment and a missing one can cost a degree, that is not a minor bug. It is a crisis of trust.
Folio is the response. We consolidate the entire chain, from the first search to the final export, and make every AI assist verifiable. The citation engine is the foundation, not a feature. Scholar answers from your library, never the open web, and every claim it surfaces traces back to a source. The aim is plain: work you trust enough to put your name on.
The whole arc
One workspace, end to end.
Click through a project. Every stage that used to demand its own tool now lives in Folio.
Discover & synthesize
One search across Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and CrossRef. Follow the citation graph to the work that matters, then build a synthesis matrix — method, sample, findings, limitations — with every cell traceable to its source.
ReplacesA dozen Google Scholar tabs, three database logins, and a literature table you maintain by hand.
Principles
What we believe.
Assist, never ghostwrite.
Scholar suggests sources, checks citations, and pressure-tests your argument. It never writes the paper. Your ideas, your voice, and your name on the work.
Integrity is the product, not a feature.
Every citation is checked against the real record. Every AI answer is grounded in your library and traceable to a source. A proof-of-work report can show, line by line, that the writing is yours.
Consolidation over sprawl.
Every capability we add removes a reason to leave. One library, one editor, one source of truth, from the first search to the final export.
Built for the work, not the workflow.
Designed around how researchers actually think under a deadline, not how software imagines they do. The craft of the tool is meant to match the rigor of the work.
From the founder
Tarek Gara
Founder
I built the first version of Folio while buried in my own research, surrounded by browser tabs and a citation list I no longer trusted. The tools meant to help were either designed in 2003 or designed to write the paper for me. Neither was acceptable.
Folio is the alternative I wanted: a workspace that takes the busywork seriously so you can take the thinking seriously, and that never asks you to trade away authorship or integrity to move faster.
We read every email. If something is broken, missing, or could be sharper, tell me.
hello@usefolio.coPut your name on work you trust.
The Scholar plan is free, forever — no credit card. Bring your sources, citations, and writing into one place.
Free to start · No credit card · Export everything · No ads