Quick answer: Keep research files in a project folder, with clear filenames and source details. Use Tag Sense AI to help categorize supported documents, review the tags, and add your own reading-status labels with Tag+. Record useful passages and context with Comment+, rate relevance with Rate+, and retrieve indexed files through Explorer filters.
Start with one research question
Suppose you are researching insulation options for an older house. Your folder contains product PDFs, research papers, supplier notes and a project outline. The goal is to find evidence for a question later, not just to accumulate neatly named downloads.
Keep publication details and the original source URL in your research notes or citation manager. File tags and comments complement that record; they do not generate or verify scholarly citations.
1. Establish a small topic vocabulary
Start with topic tags such as Insulation, Moisture and Installation. Use a separate reading-status set: To read, Reading and Reviewed. A topic describes content; a status describes your progress.
Tag Sense AI can read supported PDFs, documents and images locally through Ollama and apply content-based tags. Try a small batch and review the results. Do not use AI-applied tags as proof that a source is accurate or that you have read it.
2. Write the reason each source matters
With Comment+, add a note such as: Useful discussion of moisture management, pages 12–14. Compare the assumptions with the supplier's installation sheet before using this in the project outline. A page reference and a reason are more useful than repeating the document title.
Use Rate+ to mark relevance to your current question. For example, five stars could mean a source you expect to cite or revisit. That is your relevance judgment, not an automatic assessment of scientific quality.
3. Build a reading view
In Settings > Navigation+, create a filter combining Moisture and To read. Open it from the Search filters section in Explorer. As you read, change the status tag to Reviewed and keep the topic tags.
For a second view, combine the research topic with your highest ratings. Include the research folder in Windows Search's indexed locations so these filters can find it.
4. Keep the next actions alongside the files
Optionally save a Todo checklist in the project folder: compare two installation sheets, locate the original study, and draft the evidence summary. Pin it while you work if useful. You can also keep using your existing task manager.
A reusable checklist can be a New++ template. Creating it from the menu makes a fresh copy when you choose; a dated template name does not schedule daily creation.
The result: a collection you can reason from
When you return to the project, you can find unread material by topic, retrieve the sources you rated most relevant, and see the passages or questions you recorded. The next-action checklist lives next to the work.
Tools used: Tag Sense AI · Tag+ · Comment+ · Rate+ · Todo