NOVA

An assistant that answers confidently without showing where the answer came from is useless for research. You cannot quote it in a report, you cannot check it, and six months later you will not remember whether it was in a document or the model decided it.

NOVA had to be a place of work rather than a chat with files attached: documents go in, questions get asked, and what comes out stays — as a saved insight, as a project with open questions, as a source carrying a count of how often it has been leaned on.

The citation became the unit of the interface. 149 references across 24 sources get a surface of their own: every source shows how many times it has been cited and in which conversations. “What is this based on” is a screen, not a search through chat history.

The chat shows what it actually read: “4 in context” sits beside the answer — not a metaphor, the number of documents that went in. The model budget is in plain sight too, in the sidebar: 18,420 of 25,000 credits. A product that spends money per call should not hide the meter.

Research does not fit in one list, so the workspace is split into seven surfaces: a home for what has been happening, chat, library, insights, search, projects and sources. Each answers a different question — what do I already know, what did I ask, what is it standing on.

A project here is a set of open questions rather than a folder: “2 of 4 research questions answered” sits on the card. That framing is what stops research turning into an archive of conversations with nothing finished.