My Dream Research Workspace
We almost had a perfect research tool without realizing it.
Let me explain. And how I'm rebuilding it for my PhD research.
Software engineers have this tool called an IDE.
A place where they write and run code, building out the full software codebase. VSCode used to be the most popular one. When AI came along, there was a renaissance of this tool, like Cursor, and we ended up with a UI like this:
urban-heat · draft.md · Beeblio
EXPLORER
literature
chen2024-nature.pdf
refs.bib
data
stations.csv
figures
draft.md
notes.md
➜ urban-heat git:(main) python analysis.py
loading data/stations.csv … 214 stations
fitting diurnal model … done (r² = 0.82)
➜ urban-heat
ASSISTANT
auto3 of 5 claims check out. The mean ΔT matches Table 2, but two p-values were transposed.
+ [@chen2024] reports 2.31 °C mean UHI
+ intensity for mid-latitude cities
A left panel for the file explorer
A main area for writing code
A right panel for AI interactions
This was almost a perfect UI for research, because:
urban-heat · draft.md · Beeblio
EXPLORER
literature
chen2024-nature.pdf
refs.bib
data
stations.csv
figures
draft.md
notes.md
➜ urban-heat git:(main) python analysis.py
loading data/stations.csv … 214 stations
fitting diurnal model … done (r² = 0.82)
➜ urban-heat
ASSISTANT
auto3 of 5 claims check out. The mean ΔT matches Table 2, but two p-values were transposed.
+ [@chen2024] reports 2.31 °C mean UHI
+ intensity for mid-latitude cities
Center · Editor
At the center, the human is still the main author of the document. We researchers need to be accountable for everything we write and publish.
Left · Files
Everything is reachable on the left. A big research project has to organize a bunch of literature, data, figures, and other files.
Right · Assistant
And when we need help, the assistant is just one glance away, on the right.
Bottom · Terminal
Plus, we can run any data analysis or visualization right in the terminal, at the bottom.
But then everything changed when the Chat UI took over.
We're discarding that perfect UI in favor of chat composers everywhere:
“As a PhD student, I dream of having a tool like that, instead of a black-box chat interface where the AI just hands me a final document.”
So I'm building exactly that dream tool, and I plan to make it open.
Here's the design.
Tap to ZoomClick to Zoom
And here's the roadmap.
I'm halfway there.
Tap to ZoomClick to Zoom
I said the IDE was almost perfect.
The IDE still isn't a rich text editor. So we're closing the gap:
A Native Word Processor
We researchers still need a rich text editor like Word or Google Docs. The IDE editor isn't one.
Citations & References
The IDE still lacks a citation system and a reference manager, built in rather than duct-taped on the side.
Cloud Storage & Compute
It lives in the cloud, so we can bring our research anywhere, without fear of losing our data.
Support & follow the journey.
The tool is built in the open, and every milestone lands in public.
Feedback is welcome. We're also exploring ways to sustain this project.