> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.bowerlabs.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Connectors

> Bird connects to 23 sources out of the box — 8 always-on scholarly indexes plus 15 of the tools your lab already uses. Federated search by default; nothing lands in your knowledge base until you save it.

## 8 always-on sources — no setup

Out of the box, Bird grounds answers in eight open sources with no connection step. The new **citation trail** primitive walks both the references *and* the forward citations of any paper you give it, then ranks by citation-graph proximity — much stronger relevance than keyword overlap.

<CardGroup cols={4}>
  <Card title="OpenAlex" icon="book" href="https://openalex.org">
    \~250M scholarly works, topical search + DOI fetch.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Semantic Scholar" icon="brain" href="https://www.semanticscholar.org">
    TLDRs, citation graph, embedding-based recommendations.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Crossref" icon="link" href="https://www.crossref.org">
    Canonical DOI registry — fallback + cross-check.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Unpaywall" icon="lock-open" href="https://unpaywall.org">
    Best-known open-access copy of any DOI.
  </Card>

  <Card title="arXiv" icon="atom" href="https://arxiv.org">
    Preprints — CS, ML, physics, math, stats, biology.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Europe PMC" icon="dna" href="https://europepmc.org">
    Biomedical + life sciences, with full-text URLs.
  </Card>

  <Card title="ORCID" icon="id-card" href="https://orcid.org">
    Researcher identity + public publication histories.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Web search" icon="globe">
    Google search, including journal sites and repositories.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

**Save your ORCID iD on your profile** (Settings → Profile → *Research identity*) and Bird will pull from your publication list when you ask things like *"what have I published recently on coral alkalinity?"* — no need to share the iD each turn. We only ever read your **public** ORCID profile.

## 15 connectors — one-click OAuth

Connectors extend Bird 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.

<CardGroup cols={4}>
  <Card title="Google Drive" icon="google-drive" iconType="brands" />

  <Card title="Google Docs" icon="file-lines" />

  <Card title="Google Sheets" icon="table" />

  <Card title="Dropbox" icon="dropbox" iconType="brands" />

  <Card title="OneDrive" icon="microsoft" iconType="brands" />

  <Card title="OneNote" icon="note-sticky" />

  <Card title="Box" icon="box-archive" />

  <Card title="Slack" icon="slack" iconType="brands" />

  <Card title="Microsoft Teams" icon="users" />

  <Card title="Notion" icon="book-open" />

  <Card title="Airtable" icon="table-cells" />

  <Card title="Linear" icon="bars-progress" />

  <Card title="Asana" icon="list-check" />

  <Card title="Monday" icon="calendar" />

  <Card title="GitHub" icon="github" iconType="brands" />
</CardGroup>

Don't see a tool you rely on? [Send us feedback](/workspaces-and-account/feedback).

### 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 authorisation completes.

### 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. Selections persist per chat.

The picker also has a master **Public sources** switch. When off, every external source (the eight above, plus connectors) is blocked at the framework level — not just discouraged in the prompt — for that chat.

## Import your OneNote notebooks into Bower

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

<Note>
  Import brings content **into** your workspace — the deliberate counterpart to federated search. Use it when you want your notebooks to live in Bower, not just be searchable at the source.
</Note>

### 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.

### 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.

### 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 recognises 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, so it's available on Individual and Team plans. Restricted-mode workspaces can't use connectors yet.

## Privacy and security

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Bower never sees your password">
    Authorisation runs through the provider's standard OAuth flow. We never touch your credentials.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="OAuth tokens never live in Bower">
    Access tokens are held by our managed gateway (Composio). Bower stores only an opaque connection ID.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Searches respect provider permissions">
    Bird sees only what your account has access to in the provider. If your admin removes your access, Bird loses it on the next search.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Read-only by default">
    Bird never writes back to your connected tools. Content enters your knowledge base only when you explicitly ask Bird to save a result.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Disconnecting actually disconnects">
    Click Disconnect and the connection is revoked at the gateway; the token is destroyed. Items previously saved into your knowledge base stay put.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Restricted-mode workspaces can't use connectors yet">
    Our gateway provider's BAA isn't signed. Connectors are blocked in Restricted-mode workspaces — enforced server-side — until that's in place.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Troubleshooting

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Re-auth — when a tool stops working">
    OAuth tokens expire. When that happens the card shows a **Re-auth** badge and Bird stops using that connector until you reconnect. Click **Reconnect**.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Switching the underlying account">
    Disconnect the existing connection and click Connect again. The next OAuth flow lets you sign in with the new account.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Cancelling a stuck connection attempt">
    If an OAuth dance was interrupted, the card stays in **Connecting…** and counts toward your cap. Click **Disconnect** to discard the attempt and free the slot.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Working with binary files (XLSX, PDF, images)">
    Bird returns a clickable link to binary files in storage tools. To analyse the contents, upload the file to your Bower workspace and Bird will read it with its built-in spreadsheet, PDF, and OCR tools.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>