Research Simplified

Persimmon is a free iOS/iPadOS app that uses AI to make complex scientific papers accessible to everyone.

Persimmon App Screenshot

Research, Your Way

While we offer powerful AI tools, Persimmon is first-and-foremost an elegant research companion built to help you discover, organize, and engage with academic papers effortlessly.

All of your interests, ready to explore.
Use AI summaries to break down complex topics.
Save your favorite papers for offline access anytime.
Make notes right inside your saved papers.
Find what you need with search and category tags.
Use your chosen AI with zero vendor lock-in.
Tailored to show you exactly what you want.

Smart arXiv Exploration

Browse arXiv categories intuitively with smart filtering based on your interests. Explore millions of papers in a personalized way - all without needing an account.

Lightning-Fast Search

Full-text search across your saved articles and arXiv publications. Sort by date or relevancy and filter by category with results that feel instantaneous.

Knowledge Store

Save your favorite academic papers for offline use anytime, anywhere. Add, edit, and organize personal notes directly inside the documents for seamless reference and study.

Personalized Alerts

Get daily digests of new papers in your selected categories. Notifications respect your time and appear only when you want them to.

Persimmon at a Glance

Persimmon iPad view

AI Summaries

Persimmon uses language models to summarize the abstracts of academic papers. It generates summaries for multiple experience levels, enabling you to engage with papers at progressively higher levels of complexity.

Bring-Your-Own-AI

You bring your own OpenAI-compatible API and key, so your experience is truly tailored to your preference and powered by the language models you're most familiar with. Your cost is based precisely on the tokens you consume.

AI-Optional

We don't just offer zero vendor lock-in. You also have the ability to use Persimmon with no AI functionality at all, so you can browse arXiv exactly like you would on the web.

Personalized Feed

We use your self-reported interest areas and experience levels to pull articles from the arXiv API. That way, your feed is relevant to what you like to read and the AI summaries are at the level you're comfortable with.

Privacy-Friendly

Persimmon doesn't collect or store any data that leaves your device, track you, or collect usage data. There are no analytics or user monitoring. Your research journey is yours entirely.

No Sign-Up Required

Start using Persimmon instantly without needing to create an account. Everything is ready the moment you open the app.

Offline-First

Built with an offline-first approach, you can save your favorite articles and access them without internet. All data is stored on your device and you're able to access it easily.

Native Performance

Developed entirely using SwiftUI, Persimmon is fast and a pleasure to use. It leverages the performance benefits of Swift and offers a smooth, stutter-free experience from exploring articles to diving deep into one.

Searching and Filtering

With full-text search and tag filtering capabilities, it's easy to find exactly what you're looking for - whether you're searching your saved articles or arXiv itself.

Notifications

Get notified about the latest papers by turning on notifications. With Persimmon, you definitely won't miss the latest breakthrough in the fields you love.

Persimmon iPad view

Ready to Simplify Your Research?

Join researchers, students, and enthusiasts who use Persimmon to make scientific content accessible.