Interview with Luo Shi, founder of Qinyan Academic: A full-process research agent needs its own academic browser

exist"AIAt a time when "writing a thesis" has become a point of contention, he chose to avoid the most controversial path.

It's not a weight-reducing miracle product, it's notOne-clickGenerated. Qinyan Academic, this name sounds unusually quiet.AIThe tools in this product are quietly attracting a group of researchers. It doesn't help you finish writing your paper, but it can be a truly reliable "academic partner" when you're searching for literature, organizing your research topics, and collaborating on applications.

We interviewed the founder of Qinyan Academic to discuss why he insists on making a "small but heavy" product. Why is he not in a hurry to open up trials or chase traffic conversion, but instead focuses on refining the user experience?

He said, "Our idea is that once users use it, they won't be able to resist wanting to use it."recommendGive it to the people around you.

Product Name: Qinyan Academic

Slogan: For scientific research, use Qinyan.

Main functions:freeDocument management expert, 2G cloud storage permanentfreeMassive literature search results, reaching up to 200 million articles.AITopic selection, literature management, and literature reading (interpretation, summarization, translation, expansion, and rewriting).intelligentBasic functions such as assistant are available.freeuse.

Official website: https://www.qinyanai.com/

The following is our interview with Luo Shi, founder of Qinyan Academic:

K Sister Research Society

What was your background before? Why do you want to create this academic research-related product now?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

One of our partners has been in academia for a long time and knows this field quite well. He talked to us about many real pain points, such as needing to publish a paper to graduate or be eligible for a professional title.

Seeing this strong demand, we began to seriously consider this direction.

We happened to have acquired a literature management tool called "Write and Search," so we decided to build upon it. AI Let's see if we can help users overcome the difficulties in the academic writing process.

K Sister Research Society

How many people are in your team right now?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

There are about fifteen people now.

We changed the name to better reflect what we truly want to do.

K Sister Research Society

Why change the product name from "Write and Search" to "Qinyan Academic"?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

We felt that the name "Write and Search" narrowed the product definition a bit; it sounded more like a lightweight little tool.In the future, we hope our products can cover the entire scientific research process.From topic selection to writing, and then to reference management, we wanted to change the name to better reflect what we actually wanted to do.

K Sister Research Society

It seems your current focus is still on collecting, organizing, summarizing, and translating data. Why aren't you directly working on writing academic papers?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

This is essentially a matter of prioritization. We place more emphasis on the initial "volume" – that is, the stages where users have truly high-frequency and strong demand.

For example, Google Scholar is probably the most visited tool in the academic field, with hundreds of millions of monthly active users.The most painful thing for everyone is finding and managing literature.Instead of starting by writing a paper.

We're currently working on refining this aspect as much as possible: fast literature search, clear management, and storage in a local knowledge base. If you have 50 relevant articles and want to write a review, we can directly generate a well-formatted, accurately cited, and nearly publishable first draft for you.

So it's not that we don't write, but rather that we believe—this partWith a solid foundation, the subsequent writing will come naturally..

Focusing on academic scenarios, creating a full-process scientific research and academic platform.Agent

K Sister Research Society

Your product has also added some social features like "My Groups". Why did you consider adding these?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Actually, "My Group" existed as early as when we were writing and researching simultaneously. We kept it because teamwork is very common in academic writing, especially in the early stages of data collection and literature review.

Having a common space where group members can share materials and discuss progress in sync can actually help with the output of the paper.

For us,Collaboration is a very important area, and we will continue to increase our investment in this area in the future.We aim to develop it into a truly user-friendly and collaborative research tool.

K Sister Research Society

We know there are many in the market AI Writing tools, including general-purpose assistants, and some smaller ones.AgentOr added somePrompt wordsWhat is the most fundamental difference between you and those who assist in writing papers?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Our biggest difference from other tools is:It's not about making the model "smarter," but about making the scenario "more appropriate.".

We do not have our own research and development capabilities.Large ModelWe also use a general model, but we have made many enhancements for academic scenarios, especially in search capabilities and local knowledge base management.

SimpleIn other words, the model itself provides the ability to "think" about knowledge—it can reason and generate—but it doesn't necessarily know "where to get accurate information." If the context it receives is unreliable, its output can easily be misleading.

Therefore, we specifically emphasized two points: First,Search results must come from high-quality academic databases.First, platforms like Google Scholar, PubMed, and Articles; second,Build a local knowledge baseThis allows users to save and access their collected data in a structured way. When the model generates content, it is based on a more "credible context," resulting in more accurate answers with supporting sources.

This is why we believe that scientific research tools cannot rely solely on models to provide answers; rather, they must connect upstream and downstream scenarios.

K Sister Research Society

Understanding means ensuring that, in serious settings related to this paper, the source of information is traceable and verifiable.

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

K Sister Research Society

A while ago, there was a hot topic in the market, which was using AI to surrender AIGC What are your thoughts on this issue? Even papers written through Qinyan Academic may have certain limitations. AIIs it a problem with an excessively high GC rate?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

We've done some research, and from what we see now...AIThe methods for GC detection are relatively simple and not very comprehensive.It is indeed possible to reduce some AIThe GC rate strategy makes it undetectable by the detection algorithm..

However, our current product focus is not yet on writing; it's more on collecting, organizing, and managing knowledge, so we haven't directly addressed this issue yet.

In our future plans, when we start working on the generation functionality, we will definitely include this type of reduction... AIThe garbage collection (GC) strategy has been taken into account. We hope that the final generated content will be undetectable by the detection algorithm.AIGenerated.

We have done a lot of testing, and this is indeed something that commercially available algorithms can do.

K Sister Research Society

Compared to those general-purpose types Agent Compared to others, what is your biggest advantage?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Our biggest advantage is what I just mentioned—we focus on academic scenarios and will make specific optimizations for academic scenarios.

For example, generating a literature review must conform to academic citation standards. This involves many optimizations, and currently, the commonly used models on the market orAgentMany companies simply cannot do this. Our advantage lies in:More accurate input, output that better meets the actual needs of academics.

K Sister Research Society

Why didn't you do the document download? My understanding is that many people actually want to download the documents after searching.

Luo Shi: Yes, weComing soonA new version will include a document download function.

K Sister Research Society

It'll be online soon, right?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Yes, it's similar to an agent model. For example, you give it the title of a paper, a list of papers, or simply tell it "I want..."artificialintelligentIt will select the 10 most cited papers published in the field in the last two years.automaticSearch, download the original text, and organize and archive these documents into your personal knowledge base.— This is the academic cloud storage service we use to "write and search simultaneously".

The whole process is conversational; you give your requirements, and it performs retrieval, filtering, and storage.

K Sister Research Society

Understood. This is indeed a very basic, everyday, and frequent need, and there are many mirror sites on the market that provide similar services.

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Yes. We hope to make the process of "finding literature" smoother for users. In the past, if you wanted to download a piece of literature, you had to search many places, which was very time-consuming.

We have now integrated mirror sites, academic databases, and other things at the underlying level. Google Scholar These channels, as much as possibleautomaticI'll search the entire internet for you, and as long as it's confirmed to be correct, I'll download it for you.

An academic browser is the next key focus.

K Sister Research Society

Are your current target users college students or teachers? Is there a difference between your actual observations and your expectations?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

College students are not actually our key users.Our main user group consists of graduate students, doctoral students, teachers, and professionals such as doctors..

Undergraduates don't have a strong need to publish journal articles. For example, the requirements for graduation theses are not that strict.

Based on our existing users, this is indeed the case. There are more PhDs, doctors, and teachers among them, and their ultimate goal is to publish a creative and valuable paper that can be published in a high-level journal.

At this stage, our target users are consistent with our vision.

K Sister Research Society

The research community is relatively small, but their ability to pay is acceptable.

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

K Sister Research Society

How did you find and expand this type of user base?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

We are constantly trying this area and have summarized several directions.

On the one hand, the current situationIn-depth communication and interviews to clearly explain the product concept.;

In addition, we will find some through Xiaohongshu and Bilibili.KOLs or niche bloggers share their expertise..

Third, the academic population is relatively concentrated, whether in hospitals, schools, or research institutions.Word-of-mouth marketingThe efficiency is very high. Therefore, we are also optimizing the product experience and strengthening the product's viral spread capability.Make users willing to use toolsrecommendFor colleagues and peers around me.

fourth,Combining hot topicsFor example, recently Agent It's quite popular, we're also... Agent We've made some attempts in this area, allowing users to experience some novel things.

We are now preparing to do it.Academic Browser,Bundle Agent It integrates better with the browser. Imagine—you give it a task, and it acts like a... Agent Same,automaticIt uses various tools to complete a complex process of searching, judging, downloading, and archiving within the browser environment, ultimately giving you a finished result.

If this system can be successfully implemented and integrated with our existing systems, the completeness of the experience and the quality of the results will be significantly improved.

K Sister Research Society

I see that the current product cannot be tried out and requires payment to use. Why is it not open to users for a trial experience?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Yes, our current membership is divided into three versions: Basic, Creative, and Collaborative.

We are considering selling through a B2B approach. On the other hand, we feel that the current version is not yet perfect. In the past few months, some features have not undergone in-depth iteration.

K Sister Research Society

Understanding it means it's a more productized and polished tool, but it still needs further improvement and thorough preparation before it's open to ordinary users.

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

K Sister Research Society

Do you have many subscribers now? Are you worried about profitability?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Of course I'm worried; this is a core issue. Whether our ROI can turn positive largely depends on...Customer acquisition cost,Paying rate,Paid ARPU(Average amount paid by users).

We hope to first perfect the core user experience, especially in literature search and file management, so as to save users time and create core functions that "make people want to stay." Then we will gradually optimize the paid conversion rate and paid ARPU.

The document management functions are now complete.freeIt's open to users, with no functional restrictions. Only storage space might require a nominal fee, such as 50 cents per GB, which is very cheap overall.

Our main point of payment right now isAI The consumption of tokens, such as for screening and downloading papers, requires a large number of tokens, which is a key area we are focusing on refining.

K Sister Research Society

Do you currently prefer to generate revenue from end-users (C-end users) or do you plan to open up partnerships with businesses or universities in the future?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

We will definitely prioritize the C-end (consumer-facing) market because the C-end operating model is relatively...SimpleSome.If the product experience is good enough, it can spread naturally through word of mouth, achieving low-cost reach and...fastincrease.

Of course, once we've successfully implemented it on the consumer side, we'll also consider partnerships with businesses. We've also built in an agency mechanism, and for example, if users in hospitals or schools have suitable channels and resources, we'll provide revenue sharing support.

K Sister Research Society

Your official website has an enterprise version. Who is this version primarily targeted at?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

You're probably referring to our collaboration version. The group feature you mentioned earlier is related to team collaboration, but that's not our focus at the moment.

K Sister Research Society

Would you consider going overseas? Going overseas would essentially mean producing English academic papers, which is a demand that many international students or students studying abroad have, and they tend to have a stronger ability to pay for it.

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Yes, that's right. We are currently perfecting the core functions, and we will be able to release them very soon.A separate overseas version will be released.We will gradually promote it then.

K Sister Research Society

Have you secured any funding? Or are you not considering funding at all?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

We've been in contact with investors and institutions this year. Currently, the company's main source of funding is still investment from the major shareholder—one of our partners who has successfully exited two companies with assets exceeding 1 billion RMB and has ample personal funds.

Therefore, we are not in a hurry to raise funds, but if we come across suitable resources, we will actively pursue them.

WhichLarge ModelIs it more suitable for scientific research?

K Sister Research Society

Your product actually supports many mainstream models, including Qwen3 by default.

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

K Sister Research Society

I've seen some foreign models as well. From your internal usage or evaluation perspective, which model is more suitable for use in academic research?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

In terms of output quality, it's definitely the model we're currently paying for, like... Claude 4.GPT 4o、Gemini 2.5 Pro and Grok 4Overall, these models performed well in scientific research scenarios.

EspeciallyClaude 4 and Gemini Based on our comprehensive evaluation, we believe the 2.5 Pro is of good quality, so we use it more often when creating paid, high-quality output.

Like Xiaomi, it should give users a sense of amazement.

K Sister Research Society

What is your biggest anxiety right now? Where does it come from?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

The first point of my anxiety is...Product ExperienceIs it "touching" enough? We especially hope that users will have a "Wow, that's amazing!" feeling when they use it for the first time, and have a strong urge to share it.

But achieving this is actually very difficult. How to make...AIThe tools really helped in the research setting, and the experience was amazing, which was the most troublesome part for us.

The second anxiety isincreaseWe are a B2C product, and our revenue is directly tied to paying users. Although our target audience is in the tens of millions, the current challenge is—how to reach these people at a low cost and convert them into paying customers?

We've tried advertising, but the cost of acquiring users is still too high, and it hasn't worked yet. So we're currently trying new growth methods.

Next, we plan to launch an English version and try to expand overseas, hoping that this will become a new growth breakthrough.

K Sister Research Society

If you had to predict what your product will look like a year from now in one sentence, what would you say?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

One year later, our core positioning is aAcademic process coverageProducts.

We are preparing to AI Academic BrowserImportantly, it is based on Chrome.open sourceThe architecture focuses on academic scenarios, integrating search, literature management, paper writing, journal matching, and pre-submission processes.intelligentThe entire review process can be completed within this browser.

K Sister Research Society

Equivalent to what's currently popular on the market AI It's a browser, albeit one specifically designed for scientific and academic use. The core is still Chrome's core, but with many native enhancements added. AI ability?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Yes, that's right. We're in Chrome. open sourceIn terms of architecture, it has addedRun a small model locally and call the database.and other abilities.

Like Manus Agent The product is entirely in the cloud, and the token consumption is enormous, resulting in high costs.

We hope users can perform some model calculations on the device side. For example, performing modernization and re-ranking processes, which saves costs and improves the user experience.

This academic browser will be a key milestone for us; it will better integrate our existing functionalities and provide users with a more...intelligentThe experience.

K Sister Research Society

Products often reflect the founder's personality. What aspect of Qinyan do you think is most like you?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

I think it might be due to focus.Focus and ExcellenceHowever, this is a point that our main partners all highly regard Xiaomi.

K Sister Research Society

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Yes, we want our product to have that eye-catching appeal. After comparing various products, users should still be amazed when they use ours.

To achieve this, we must focus on the most critical and important points.To achieve the highest level of excellence in the core aspects of academia.

We will bring the most cutting-edge AI Abilities, such as Agent ,AI The browser is integrated to provide a truly exceptional experience for target users in this niche market.

K Sister Research Society

I understand. So, your personal understanding of yourself is that you are an extremely focused person, is that right?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

Yes, um. I think so.

K Sister Research Society

Hmm, is it reflected in your life? Besides work or product development, what aspect of your life or hobby reflects this kind of dedication and focus?

🧑🏻‍💻 Luo Shi

My hobbies in life are relativelySimpleTwo of them are relatively long-lasting, one is...readOne isski.

I've been skiing for over a decade, and I've always been skiing; as for reading, I basically read 100 books a year, and I've maintained that routine for many years.

After going over it again and again, I feel like only these two things really attract me.

K Sister Research Society

Thank you for sharing today. We will continue to follow Qinyan's every step.