I built the workspace I wanted to use.

The short version of the story

Clarami started because my girlfriend was writing an academic paper and kept running into the same wall. She had the ideas. She had the sources. She just didn't have a workspace that kept all of it connected while she wrote, so most of her time went into fighting the tools instead of the argument.

I'm a Microsoft engineer, not an academic and not a writing coach. I couldn't teach her how to write a better paper. But I could see the workflow problem clearly enough to build the tool I wished existed for her: a place where her draft, her PDFs, and her citations lived together, and where the AI helped her write faster without quietly inventing the things she'd have to defend later.

That's the whole reason this exists. One engineer trying to help one writer get unstuck, so she could write better papers, faster. It turned out a lot of other people were stuck in the same way.

The person building this

Hi, I'm John S..

Microsoft engineer. Founder of Clarami.

I'm a software engineer at Microsoft. I built Clarami nights and weekends, for my girlfriend first, and now for anyone trying to write a paper without losing their mind.

Why I built this

Academic writing has a structural problem that chatbots don't solve.

The hard part isn't generating text. The hard part is keeping your argument grounded. Knowing which claim came from which source, on which page, in which context. Catching a citation that drifted from what the paper actually says. Holding the whole thing together across a 4,000-word draft when you're working from twelve PDFs.

I built Clarami to address that problem directly. Not with a chat interface that produces plausible-sounding output and leaves verification to you, but with a purpose-built research workspace where every drafted claim stays linked to its source, and every citation can be checked against the original document without switching tabs.

What Clarami is

Clarami is an intelligent research workspace for students, researchers, and professionals who write evidence-backed work. It pulls together the pieces a typical research workflow leaves scattered:

• A real document editor. Not a prompt box pretending to be one.
• Semantic research discovery. Find relevant literature without leaving your workspace.
• PDF management. Read, annotate, and cite your sources directly.
• A reference library. Organized, searchable, and connected to your draft.
• Clara. A document-aware AI assistant grounded in your sources, not the open web.
• AutoDraft. In-line writing suggestions that stay connected to your working context.
• Citation tools. APA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, and more, with diagnostics to flag errors before they reach your submission.

When you're done, export to DOCX, PDF, or LaTeX. Everything you need lives in one place.

Where I am

Clarami is an early-stage product, built and maintained by one engineer working on it nights and weekends. I'm not backed by venture capital. I'm not trying to build a general-purpose AI assistant.

I'm building one thing well: a workspace that makes research writing faster, more rigorous, and easier to verify, for the people who care about getting it right.

The product is live, actively developed, and free to try. I'm honest about what it does and what it doesn't. If something isn't working the way it should, I want to hear about it.

How I think about this

Source traceability over generated confidence.

Every claim in your draft should be traceable to the source that supports it. I build toward that, not away from it.

Verification is your right.

You should always be able to check what the AI helped you write. I don't hide the reasoning or make it harder to audit your own work.

Academic integrity is a feature, not a footnote.

I treat it as central to the product, not as something tucked into a disclaimer at the bottom of a terms page.

Plain honesty over marketing language.

I say what the product does. I tell you its limits. I'd rather you make an informed decision than feel surprised after you upgrade.