Your research deserves
a sharper question.
Research Compass is an AI research-advisor persona you chat with inside Aurvek — about literature gaps, methodology choices, citation formatting, and that nagging feeling your hypothesis needs work. For students and researchers who want a rigorous sounding board while they think.
Straight talk first: this is a chat persona, not a database or a search engine. It can't connect to PubMed, JSTOR, or Scopus, it can't fetch papers for you, and any source it mentions still has to be checked by you. What it's good at is thinking with you.
No payment required to open · conversation usage consumes your Aurvek balance
A persona in the Aurvek chat — nothing to install
Research Compass lives inside Aurvek's shared webchat. It isn't an app, a dashboard, or a software suite — it's a pre-configured conversation partner with an academic-advisory personality. You open the chat, you type, it answers in the same window.
Because the persona is already set up, it knows to ask about your field, your academic level, and where you are in the process before giving advice — and it defaults to methodological rigor instead of generic encouragement.
Advisor persona, built in
Calibrates depth and vocabulary to your level — an undergrad capstone gets different advice than a PhD literature review.
Text in, text out
You type or paste text; it replies in chat. No uploads, no voice calls — just the conversation.
Your judgment stays in charge
It challenges vagueness and offers options. Every decision — and every sentence you submit — stays yours.
Three steps, one chat window
Nothing to configure. The conversation is the whole interface.
Say where you're stuck
Describe your field, your academic level, and your stage — early brainstorming, mid literature review, pre-defense panic. Research Compass adjusts its depth and vocabulary accordingly.
Work the problem in text
Paste your research question and get it pressure-tested. Paste your outline and get structural feedback. Debate thematic analysis vs. grounded theory, or whether your design calls for regression or ANOVA. It will push back when something is vague — that's the point.
it reformats them (APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE…) →
you verify each one against the original
Take the text, keep the thinking yours
Copy out whatever helps: a tighter research question, a cleaner structure, a reformatted reference list, a justification to discuss with your committee. The writing and the decisions remain yours — it's a sounding board, not a ghostwriter.
Example conversation — demo
Illustrative demo, not a real transcript. Actual replies vary and are longer.
"I'm writing my Masters thesis on microplastics in freshwater ecosystems. Can you help me map what's been studied vs. under-explored in the last 5 years?"
Good scope to narrow. Three questions first: 1) accumulation, toxicology, or transport? 2) lakes, rivers, or urban waterways? 3) systematic or narrative review? … Then I'd build a matrix of study type × ecosystem and mark where the last five years are thin. If you enable web search, I can look up recent review papers too — but verify anything I find before citing it. (shortened sample reply)
"Is a mixed-methods approach overkill for my undergrad capstone? My advisor is skeptical but I think I need both survey data and interviews."
"Convert these 8 citations from APA 6th to APA 7th and flag any that look incomplete: [pasted list follows]"
"My hypothesis is 'social media use causes anxiety in teens.' Help me sharpen it into something testable."
"I have a sample of 43 participants. My committee wants justification that this is enough for a phenomenological study. Help?"
What a conversation can give you
Everything below arrives as text in the chat window. Nothing else is produced.
Sharper research questions
A broad hunch pressure-tested into something specific and falsifiable, with clearer variables and scope.
Literature-review strategy
Themes, gap-mapping approaches, keywords, and Boolean search strings — to run yourself in your library's databases.
Methodology reasoning
Qualitative vs. quantitative vs. mixed methods, common pitfalls, and justification arguments to discuss with your advisor.
Citation formatting help
Paste references you already have; get them reformatted and inconsistencies flagged. Every result still needs your check against the original.
Draft critique
Paste a paragraph or outline and get structural and logical feedback — gaps, leaps, and unclear claims pointed out.
Statistics sanity checks
Which test fits which design, what a p-value does and doesn't say, and sample-size reasoning to bring to your committee.
Honest note: it can be wrong — especially about recent publications and niche methods — and it never replaces your advisor, your library, or your own reading. Treat it as a thinking partner whose work you check.
What it does not do
Not a database
It can't connect to PubMed, JSTOR, Scopus, or your university library, and it doesn't retrieve papers. For actual database searching you use your own tools — it helps you build the search strategy.
No file uploads
You can't attach PDFs, documents, images, or screenshots in this chat. Paste the abstract, passage, table, or reference list as text instead.
Not a citation authority
References it writes from memory may be incomplete, wrong, or invented. Use it to format citations you already have — and verify every source before it goes into your work.
Not a ghostwriter
It helps you think, outline, and critique — it won't write your thesis or paper. Most institutions have AI-use policies, and yours still applies.
Not always right
It doesn't know your subfield's latest papers by heart, and statistical advice can be off. Verify critical claims before you rely on them.
Text only
No voice calls, no audio — the conversation happens in writing, in the chat window.
Exactly what access looks like
- Access
- Research Compass is public in the Aurvek prompt catalog. Open it and start typing — there is nothing to install and no setup.
- Cost
- No payment required to open this prompt. Conversation usage consumes your balance according to the model used.
- What you need
- An Aurvek account. The register button creates one and takes you straight to the chat.
Capabilities that depend on your settings
It can look things up online while you chat. Treat results as leads: every source it finds still needs to be opened, read, and verified by you. With the toggle off, it works from training knowledge only.
The chat keeps the conversation history in your account, so you can pick a thread back up. It remembers what's in that history — nothing beyond it.
A standard conversation export is available from the chat, so you can keep the exchange alongside your notes.
Frequently asked questions
No — it isn't connected to any academic database and doesn't retrieve papers. Where it helps is strategy: keywords, Boolean search strings, and inclusion criteria that you then run in your own library tools. If you turn on web search it can look things up online, but treat anything it finds as a lead to verify, not a vetted source.
No — file and image uploads aren't available in this chat. Paste the abstract, a passage, or your notes as text, and it will discuss them with you: strengths, weaknesses, whether the reasoning holds, how it fits your review.
No, and it shouldn't. It can help you outline sections, critique drafts, and spot logical gaps — the writing stays yours. Most universities have clear policies about AI-generated text; check yours and use it as an advisor, not a ghostwriter.
Treat them as formatting help, not ground truth. When you paste real references, it reformats them well and can flag inconsistencies. When it names a source from memory — or from a web lookup — verify it before citing, because it can get details wrong.
The persona is pre-configured for academic advising: it asks your field, level, and stage up front, defaults to methodological rigor, and pushes back on vague questions — instead of waiting for you to prompt it into that role.
Your hypothesis won't sharpen itself.
Open the chat, describe where your research is stuck, and think it through — one question at a time.
Start chattingNo payment required to open · conversation usage consumes your Aurvek balance