SMF·JENNI-AI
Can a prompt replace Jenni AI?
AI writing — AI drafting, research and content optimization
Exhibit tracking slip
Verdict
Chunking a user's own uploaded PDFs into a local, searchable index and having an LLM draft paragraphs with inline citation markers tied back to specific passages is a real weekend build, not a sitting one — getting citation attachment to reliably point at the right source passage, rather than a plausible-sounding but wrong one, takes real iteration on the retrieval step. Jenni's actual edge is a citation search that reaches beyond files you already have, into a broader academic index.
Exhibit A — The prompt
Received on31.07.2026Build a personal citation-aware drafting tool: upload your own PDFs, index them locally, and draft prose with an LLM that cites specific passages. Stack: Next.js, SQLite with FTS5 for local full-text search over uploaded sources, Anthropic and OpenAI APIs for drafting.
Core loop: the user uploads PDF or text sources they already have and the tool extracts and chunks the text, indexing it with SQLite FTS5 for keyword search. Writing happens section by section: the user describes what a paragraph should cover, the retrieval step searches the local index for the most relevant chunks, and the LLM drafts the paragraph using only those retrieved passages, inserting an inline citation marker after each claim that links back to the specific source chunk it came from. Any sentence the model generates that retrieval couldn't ground in a specific passage is visibly flagged rather than silently left uncited. A revision history keeps every draft version alongside its source citations.
Requires an Anthropic or OpenAI API key for drafting — without one, uploading and indexing sources still works, and the tool functions as a searchable source library, just without generated prose. Retrieval quality depends entirely on the local keyword search, so results are only as good as the sources you've actually uploaded.
Do not build: a broader academic search index beyond the user's own uploaded files (that needs a licensed dataset well beyond personal scope), submission-ready formatting for specific journals or citation styles, or multi-user collaboration — this is a personal drafting tool grounded in files you already have, not a research-discovery engine.Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.
Exhibit B — What you lose
- B.1 citation search across a broad academic index, not just files you've already uploaded
- B.2 a polished document editor with formatting and export tuned for academic submission
- B.3 team and advisor collaboration on the same draft
- B.4 brand- or discipline-trained models tuned for specific academic styles
- B.5 large template libraries for different paper formats and citation styles
Prior art
Exhibit C — Why people still pay: workflow, data, and model tuning
People pay for Jenni AI because most academic writing needs sources beyond whatever a writer already has saved locally — finding the right supporting paper from a broad index, not just retrieving from files already on hand, is the harder half of the citation problem. A personal build handles the half where sources are already collected; it doesn't discover new ones.
Questions
Can I import my existing Jenni AI documents?
Jenni exports drafts as plain text or Word documents, which paste in directly. Your uploaded source library would need to be re-uploaded here, since Jenni doesn't hand back its internal source index in a portable format.
Will it work on my phone?
Reading and reviewing citations works fine on mobile. Uploading PDF sources and doing serious drafting is a desktop task this build doesn't optimize for a small screen.
What does it cost to run?
Drafting a section with citation grounding costs a few cents in API usage per paragraph, depending on model and length. Indexing uploaded PDFs is free local computation.
What's the one thing that doesn't survive the rebuild?
Finding sources you don't already have. Jenni can suggest citations from a broad academic index even when you haven't uploaded the paper yourself; this build only ever cites what you've personally fed it, so if the right source isn't already in your folder, it simply won't get cited.
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