Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools and Resources

Warning

⚠️ Note that all AI tools should be used with caution. Ensure that permission is not granted to private/patented repositories or non-open access resources. ⚠️

Types of tool

Here is an overview of the types of AI tools summarized below:

• Paper review tools: These are used specifically to discover new topics of interest, identify gaps in your current corpus of papers, or to verify the findings of the papers you are interested in reviewing. These tools can often be integrated with academic paper organizers such as Zotero.

• Large language models (LLMs): Easy-to-interact with chatbots that work wel

• AI code editors: Therse are code editors that integrates the LLM’s chat interface with a coding IDE. Often integrates AI Agents (read more about Agentic AI here) that allow different coding tasks to be completed in parallel.

AI Research Tools

Below is a collaboratively compiled list of AI tools that can be used for research, note-taking, literature review, and a multitude of other purposes.

Category	Tool/Resource	Description	Pricing
Paper review tools	Elicit	A “ChatGPT for papers” particularly helpful for discovering key literature on a specific topic or field.	A free Basic tier, with a Pro tier that begins at $49/month. I have personally found the basic tier sufficient for regular use.
	Research Rabbit	Helpful with identifying gaps in knowledge base. Integrates nicely with Zotero.	Largely free but offer a $10/month subscription for expanded search and citation reliability metrics.
	Perplexity	The LLM tailored specifically for literature reviews and verifies the findings of papers. Has access to a broad corpus of academic journals through collaborations with PNAS, Wiley, and IOP, among many others.	No free tier. The basic tier begins att $20/month.
Large Language Models (LLMs)	ChatGPT	The OG LLM developed by OpenAI that excels at writing, drafting, and image generation.	Free and $8 version available for basic tasks. The $20 Pro tier is required for more extensive coding tasks.
	Claude	Anthropic’s flagship product that works great for data analysis and coding. The first LLM to integrate the Model Context Protocol (MCP).	A free plan is available, but an $20/month or $200/year Pro tier is more suited for daily research tasks.
	Gemini	Google’s in-house LLM that has arguably the most recent information given its access to the Google search engine. Works great for initial topic development.	Google offers a free Education tier that works well for building resumes and reviewing course material for exam prep.
AI code editors	Cursor	An agentic AI software development platform best for complex software development. Integrates with all popular LLMs (i.e. OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini with a limited selection of each product’s more recent models). Often a little overkill for normal research tasks.	A free tier is available, with an $20/month Pro subscription offered.
	Antigravity	Google’a agentic AI platform built on Gemini 2.0. Like Cursor, it allows the coordination of multiple AI agents and has a larger context capacity than other code editors at similar pricing tiers.	A free tier is available, with a Pro tier at $20/month.
	VS Code	The workhorse, OG code IDE. Its default built-in agent is based on Microsoft Copilot (that in turn is based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT), but can be easily integrated with other LLMs and AI agents. Has a large preexisting and growing library of tools, and is by far the coding tool with the lowest barrier to entry.	Free to download and use. Cost only incurred via the connected AI services.
	Claude Code	Anthropic’s autonomous coding agent. It differs from other IDE-based code editors as it runs directly in your terminal (a terminal-based agent). This provides it access to your entire project codebase, allowing it to read files, write code, run tests, and commit changes.	Included in the Claude Pro tier.
	Codex	OpenAI’s version of a terminal-based AI agent. Unlike Claude Code, Codex allows you to select from low, minimal, medium, and high reasoning depending on the complexity of your problem.	Included in ChatGPT’s Free tier.