Quickstart

This walkthrough gets you from sign-in to a citation-backed mindmap in about five minutes.

Agent Bayes is currently invite-only. If you don't have access, apply for early access at agentbayes.com. If you have an invitation email, follow the link to set your password and sign in.

1. Welcome flow

The first time you sign in, a short welcome flow walks you through creating a project, creating a knowledge base, and connecting the two. The steps below cover the same ground in case you skipped the flow. Additional projects and knowledge bases can be created later from the main interface.

2. Create a knowledge base

A knowledge base is an indexed corpus the agent retrieves from. Every claim it writes is grounded in a document inside one of your knowledge bases.

  • Go to the Knowledge Bases page and click "+ New Knowledge Base".
  • Give it a name (e.g. "Anthropic Reasoning sources") and optionally a description.

See Knowledge Bases for more details.

3. Create a project

A project groups your knowledge bases and research mindmaps around a broad topic.

  • Go to the Projects page and click "+ New Project".
  • Give it a name (e.g. "Anthropic Reasoning") and an optional description.

See Projects for more details.

4. Attach the knowledge base to your project

  • On the Projects page, select the project you just created.
  • Click "+ Attach Knowledge Bases" and select the knowledge base you created in step 2.
  • Click "Done" to apply.

5. Upload papers to your knowledge base

The knowledge base holds documents, each with bibliographic metadata (title, authors, year). Each document can contain one or more document files, which are the actual PDFs.

This data model follows the way Zotero structures items and files. A single item can have multiple files (e.g., a book with a separate PDF for each chapter).

It's possible to create documents manually, but if you already use Zotero, syncing via the Zotero plugin is the recommended path.

To upload PDFs directly:

  • Go to the Knowledge Bases page and select the knowledge base you created.
  • Click "+ Add Document" and fill in the metadata form (title, authors, year, reference).
  • Click "Create Document" to save.
  • Select the document you just created from the list.
  • Drop your PDF into the box to start the upload and indexing process.

Indexing runs in the background. You'll see per-file status (Pending, Indexing %, Completed, Failed).

6. Create a mindmap

In the sidebar, click the dropdown and select your project. Project-specific items now appear in the sidebar. From the Mindmaps section, click "+ New Mindmap".

You'll see an empty canvas with a main "Untitled Mindmap" topic root node. The right side bar contains a chat section, as well as other tabs to manage citations, semantic search, and more.

7. Issue your first instruction

In the chat, write a natural-language instruction. Good first prompts are broad but focused, for example:

Build an overview of leading theories explaining Anthropic Reasoning, with their main proponents and evidence.

The agent will:

  1. Plan the work and retrieve from your knowledge base.
  2. Synthesize citation-backed claims.
  3. Apply them as nodes on the mindmap, streaming updates as it goes.
  4. Return a short summary describing what changed and what (if anything) the knowledge base couldn't cover.
Runtime~3 minues
Credits used~50

Perplexity review of the output:

This is a genuinely impressive and rigorously structured mindmap that demonstrates deep familiarity with the primary literature on anthropic reasoning, covering SSA, SIA, WAP/SAP, EOP, Sleeping Beauty, and the reference class problem with precise citations

8. Refine

Select a node and follow up conversationally:

Expand "SSA theory" to include the major counter-arguments.

Selected nodes (and their subtree) become the agent's context, so it knows what "this section" refers to. Keep iterating. Restructure, polish prose, or swap citations until the mindmap reflects how you think about the topic.

Next steps