Research

Overview

Arca's research tools let you ask questions and get answers grounded in your own documents. Instead of searching through files manually, you describe what you need and the AI retrieves relevant information from your libraries, synthesizes it, and cites its sources. Every claim links back to the specific document it came from.

Starting a research chat

There are two ways to start researching:

• New chat — Click New chat to open a standalone research conversation. Choose your libraries and playbook, then start asking questions.
• From a request — Every request has a built-in AI assistant panel on the right side. The assistant already has the request's title, description, and comments as context, so you can jump straight into research.

Attaching libraries

Libraries are the knowledge bases that power research. When you attach a library to your chat, the AI can search through all the documents inside it to find relevant information.

• Use the library selector at the top of the chat to choose one or more libraries.
• When you select a playbook, its associated libraries are automatically attached.
• You can add more libraries on top of the playbook's defaults at any time.

Using playbooks for research

Playbooks give the AI specific instructions for how to approach your question. For example, a “Vendor Agreement Review” playbook might instruct the AI to focus on liability clauses, payment terms, and IP provisions.

• Select a playbook from the dropdown before or during your chat.
• The playbook's instructions are applied to every response the AI generates.
• When a request is created, Arca automatically suggests the best-matching playbook based on the request's content.

Citations

Every AI response includes inline citations that link back to source documents. Citations appear as numbered markers in the text (e.g., [1], [2]).

• Click a citation to see the source document, the specific passage, and its context.
• A citation carousel below the response lets you scroll through all referenced sources.
• Citations are only generated from documents in your attached libraries—the AI does not fabricate sources.

Reasoning transparency

Arca shows you how the AI arrives at its answers. As the AI processes your question, you can see its chain-of-thought reasoning—the steps it takes to search your documents, evaluate relevance, and formulate a response.

This transparency helps you verify the AI's logic and catch any gaps in its analysis before relying on the output.

File attachments

You can attach files directly to a research chat for the AI to analyze. This is useful when you have a specific document to review that isn't in a library.

• Supported formats include PDFs, Word documents, images, and text files.
• Attached files are processed and included in the AI's context for that conversation.

Legal research

Beyond your own documents, Arca provides access to legal research databases including:

• Case law — Search court opinions, dockets, and judicial decisions.
• Court information — Jurisdiction details, citation formats, and court metadata.
• Patent search — Find and analyze patent records.

Legal research results are cited just like library documents—every reference links back to its source so you can verify the information independently.

Managing chats

• Chat history — All chats are saved and accessible from your chat list.
• Visibility — Set chats as public (visible to your team) or private.
• Linked requests — Chats started from a request stay linked so you can always navigate between them.
• Edit and regenerate — Edit any message in the conversation to refine your question and regenerate the AI's response.
• Feedback — Use thumbs up or thumbs down on responses to help improve quality.