Writing assistant for summarizing information
Sidelong is a free AI writing assistant that supports writers throughout the entire process of writing. It doesn’t write articles for you, but it focuses on helping you research, develop ideas, and refine your work. It summarizes saved materials and pulls out key information, which is useful when you're working with multiple sources.
Sidelong allows you to save articles, books, YouTube videos, podcasts, tweets, newsletters, and PDFs, and then access the relevant information while you are working on a draft. It’s basically built to keep your research on the sidelines so you can stay focused while writing, especially when you're working on research-heavy articles.
Save time in going through old notes
Sidelong includes an editor that keeps your research close while you write. Important information can be displayed alongside your draft, reducing the need to search through old notes. All findings can be turned into cited reports and saved to your library, giving you another resource to work from when developing an article or newsletter. However, for casual writers who only write occasionally, its research and publishing ecosystem may feel unnecessary.
Its Ask Sidelong feature can answer questions, brainstorm ideas, explore topics, and give feedback on your writing. What sets it apart from a typical chatbot is that it’s connected to your research library. For writers who pay attention to where their information comes from, this can be a big advantage. It makes the AI feel more like a helpful research assistant rather than just a tool that automatically generates content.
The platform comes with tools for publishing and sharing your work. It offers options to host your content and manage your subscribers. You can also export your work in formats like Markdown and HTML. Additionally, it supports publishing workflows with platforms like Substack and Beehiiv, and there are social media tools that help turn your longer articles into promotional posts for sites like X and LinkedIn.
Perfect for writing research-heavy material
Overall, Sidelong takes a different approach to AI writing by focusing more on enhancing the whole writing process rather than just replacing the writer. Its research library, AI assistant, writing space, and publishing tools all work together for content creators. However, it’s not the best option if you're looking for quick, AI-generated articles. It’s more useful for writers who do a lot of extensive research.
