BIOS lets researchers fork an active research thread without losing where they started. Research rarely moves in a single direction. A finding opens two possible paths, a hypothesis splits into competing mechanisms, or a dataset suggests an analysis the original query did not anticipate. Previously, pursuing a second direction meant either overwriting the existing thread or starting over entirely. BIOS builds a persistent world state across every session. That context is what makes each subsequent step in a research session more informed than the last. Conversation branching duplicates an active research thread from its current state with the original staying intact. The copy carries the full persistent world state forward and accepts a new objective, allowing both directions to run independently from the same starting point. Every branch lets researchers carry the full research context forward.

Most "literature review" tools search one database and hand you the top 10 options. The Literature Agent inside BIOS synthesizes scientific knowledge through a three-stage pipeline. First, it expands your research question into optimized queries across seven sources in parallel: ArXiv, PubMed, CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, Google Scholar, ClinicalTrials. gov, and UniProt. Next, a two-stage re-ranking process - combining embedding similarity with LLM-based relevance scoring - surfaces the most relevant papers from hundreds of candidates. Two modes support different workflows. > Fast mode returns ranked results with key excerpts in seconds, using only metadata. > Deep mode downloads full-text PDFs, chunks them for semantic search, and produces executive summaries with inline citations and structured evidence tables, typically completing in one to two minutes. The result is a literature review that the agent has actually read.