Connectors

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13 always-on sources, no setup

Out of the box, Bower grounds answers in 13 open sources with no connection step: eight for the literature and the open web, and five public biology databases.

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Literature and the open web

The citation trail walks both the references and the forward citations of any paper you give it, then ranks the results by how closely they’re connected to that paper in the citation graph rather than by keyword overlap, which is usually a better guide to relevance. Save your ORCID iD on your profile (Settings → Profile → Research identity) and Bower will pull from your publication list when you ask things like “what have I published recently on coral alkalinity?” You don’t need to share the iD each turn. We only ever read your public ORCID profile.

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Biology databases

When you ask about a specific gene, protein, compound, or structure, Bower can look up the record rather than answering from memory. Every answer links to the record it came from, so you can check it at the source. If a lookup fails, Bower says so; it never presents an answer from memory as a looked-up record.

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15 connectors, one-click OAuth

Connectors extend Bower into the tools you’ve licensed. Each is connected per user, per workspace: your OAuth, your access. A colleague’s connections aren’t visible from your account. Don’t see a tool you rely on? Send us feedback.

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How to connect

Open Account Settings → Connectors, click Connect on the tool you want, sign in at the provider, and you’re done. The card flips to Connected when authorization completes.

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Start with the tools behind your sign-in

If you signed in to Bower with Google or Microsoft, the Get set up section on your dashboard may suggest the tools that match that account:

• Google: Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Sheets.
• Microsoft: OneDrive and OneNote.

Choose a suggested tool to start its normal provider authorization flow. You can still connect any supported tool later from Account Settings → Connectors. The suggestion does not share access automatically: each tool needs its own approval.

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Picking which connectors are active in a chat

Connecting a tool makes it available. To use it in a conversation, open the connector picker in the composer and tick which connectors should be active. Fewer active sources = faster, more focused answers. Your picks are saved in your browser for each workspace, so they carry over to every chat in that workspace until you change them. The picker also has a Public sources switch. When it’s off, Bower can’t reach any of the 13 always-on sources above (the eight literature and web sources and the five biology databases). The block is enforced before any request leaves Bower, not just discouraged in the prompt, and it’s checked on every message you send. The switch is saved in your browser, so it stays off in every chat and workspace until you turn it back on. It doesn’t cover your connectors: turn those off one by one in the same picker.

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Import your OneNote notebooks into Bower

Connecting a tool lets Bower search it in place. Importing is different: it makes a copy of your content inside Bower, as notes you can edit, search, link, and organize like anything else you’ve captured. OneNote is the first connector you can import from.

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How to import

1. Connect OneNote first (above), then open Account Settings → Connectors.
2. On the OneNote card, click Import.
3. In the wizard, browse your notebooks → sections → pages and tick what you want. Ticking a notebook or section selects everything inside it.
4. Choose where it lands: Create a new collection, or Add to an existing collection.
5. Click Import. The wizard closes and the import runs in the background.

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What happens

• Bower mirrors your OneNote structure: notebooks and sections become nested collections, and each page becomes a note.
• Progress shows page by page in the tasks tray (bottom-right). You can keep working while it runs.
• Each note records where it came from, so your imported content stays tied to its OneNote source.
• Formatting carries over (tables, to-do checkboxes, and text styling), and inline images are brought across too. If an image can’t be fetched, Bower flags it on the note rather than dropping it silently.

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Good to know

• Read-only at the source. Import never writes back to OneNote. Edits you make to an imported note stay in Bower.
• Re-importing won’t duplicate. Bower recognizes pages it has already imported, so running the same import again won’t create duplicate notes.
• Large notebooks. A single import handles up to 500 pages. For a bigger notebook, import one section at a time.
• Availability. Import is part of connectors, which are available on every plan: Starter, Individual, and Team. Restricted-mode workspaces can’t use connectors yet.

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Privacy and security

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Troubleshooting