FAQ

Is my research data private?

Yes. CoSci is local-first: it runs on your machine and stores everything in a local SQLite database. Nothing is uploaded by default. In online mode, only the content you approve is sent, and only to the provider whose key you configured.

Can it hallucinate citations?

It’s designed not to. Literature and citation work goes through ToolUniverse to real databases, and a citation-existence gate audits each claim against references that actually exist.

Do I need an API key?

No. A built-in heuristic engine runs the whole workflow offline with no keys. Add a provider (Claude/Codex CLI, Gemini, or DeepSeek) for stronger reasoning and real tool calls.

What can it do end to end?

The full research loop — incubate an idea into ranked questions, sharpen one, lay out competing mechanisms, design a killer experiment behind a kill-criteria gate, record observations, update beliefs, and draft proposal/manuscript packets — all versioned. See the worked example.

Who is it for?

Working scientists — grad students, postdocs and PIs — who want an AI collaborator they can trust with unpublished work. It’s aimed first at the life sciences, but the workflow is domain-general.

Is it open source?

Yes — CoSci is released under AGPL-3.0. Read it, build it, self-host it. It’s an actively developed project, provided as-is.

Is there a hosted or team version?

Not yet. The local-first app is the product today. Managed cloud sync and a shared lab/team workspace are on the roadmap.

What does it cost?

The local-first app is free. You only pay for your own AI usage (and free tiers, like Gemini’s, work fine).