Your AI research assistant

Finish your thesis with everything you’ve read at your fingertips. Highlight what you read and citegeist connects it into quotes, notes and links, and an AI agent that knows all of it helps you plan and write.

Or paste this into the Terminal on your Mac

$ curl -fsSL https://citegeist.si/install.sh | sh

or let your agent do it

For macOS on Apple Silicon. Free and open source under Apache-2.0. Step-by-step guide

Library/ PhD proposal/ Luhmann 1984, Social Systems luhmann1984soziale

No jobs

Overview Read PDF Text

p. 31 Chapter 2: Social Systems and Communication

Social systems consist of communications and only of communications. Human beings are in their environment. This distinction is the starting point of the considerations that follow and does not devalue human beings.

Whoever observes communication always observes an operation that orients itself toward earlier operations and expects further connections.

p. 58 Every communication connects to an earlier communication and opens the way for the next one. In this way a system reproduces itself from its own operations.

The self-description of a system always remains a part of the system that it describes.

CARDS 2 CONNECTIONS AGENT

Claude Code your subscription

Context Source luhmann1984soziale

You · 10:51

✓ search: human beings, social system

✦ claude-code · 10:51

Luhmann places human beings outside of social systems. A social system consists only of communications, and people belong to its environment Luhmann 1984, p. 31. Each communication connects to an earlier one Luhmann 1984, p. 58, which is how the system keeps itself going.

Save as card Copy with citations

Ask something or request a change

01 Library

Every paper, card and note in here is a file. You can open the folder in Finder.

01 Library

Your library is a folder on your Mac.

Paste a DOI, arXiv link, ISBN or URL, or drop a PDF into the window. citegeist looks up the metadata at Crossref, OpenAlex, arXiv and the German National Library, fetches an open-access PDF when one exists and converts it into text with page references.

Imports from Zotero, BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON bring your collection along. The folder opens as an Obsidian vault and syncs through iCloud, Dropbox or git.

Library 9 items + Add Paste a DOI, arXiv link, ISBN or URL, drop a PDF into the window

No jobs Resolving 1 of 1

Project All projects Reading status All Unread Reading Read

TitleAuthorsYearTypeStatus

10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762 ... Adding

How to Take Smart Notes ahrens2017how Ahrens 2017 Book Read

Sorting Things Out bowker1999sorting Bowker, Star 1999 Book Unread

As We May Think bush1945think Bush 1945 Magazine article Read

The Relevance of Algorithms gillespie2014relevance Gillespie 2014 Book chapter Reading

The Theory of Communicative Action habermas1981theorie Habermas 1981 Book Read

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions kuhn1962structure Kuhn 1962 Book Read

Reassembling the Social latour2005reassembling Latour 2005 Book Unread

Social Systems: Outline of a General Theory luhmann1984soziale Luhmann 1984 Book Reading

The Platform Society vandijck2018platform van Dijck, Poell, de Waal 2018 Book Unread

02 Reading

I keep the printed page number with every quote.

02 Reading

Every highlight becomes a quote card.

Select a passage in the PDF or in the text view and choose Quote. citegeist saves the exact wording with the printed page number, and an AI paraphrase follows a few seconds later.

One click copies a card as a verbatim or an indirect citation. Quick insert opens your cards with a hotkey and pastes the citation into the app you are writing in.

Library/ Gillespie 2014, The Relevance of Algorithms gillespie2014relevance

No jobs

Overview Read

p. 167 Algorithms play an increasingly important role in selecting what information is considered most relevant to us, a crucial feature of our participation in public life.

Search engines help us navigate massive databases of information, or the entire web. Recommendation algorithms map our preferences against others, suggesting new or forgotten bits of culture for us to encounter. Quote Note Ask the agent

Algorithms manage our interactions on social networking sites, highlighting the news of one friend and excluding another's.

03 Planning

Tell me what you noticed, and I’ll write it into the chapter it belongs to.

03 Planning

The planning agent finds the literature and builds your plan with you.

Literature search

Enter a topic, and citegeist searches OpenAlex, arXiv and Semantic Scholar. It scores every paper from 0 to 100, verifies each DOI and sorts the result into peer-reviewed papers, preprints and grey literature. A saved search runs as an alert and puts new papers into your inbox.

Research plans

A plan holds the outline of your proposal or paper, with a purpose and a status for every chapter. The agent notes your insights in the right chapter and links them to their sources. The literature matrix compares your sources against your research questions, and every cell names the passage it rests on.

1 · Find the literature 2 · Plan with the agent

Literature search/ Platform governance

Searching

Queries "platform governance" content moderation algorithms "platform regulation" since 2015 · 40 peer-reviewed

OpenAlex

0 found

arXiv

0 found

Semantic Scholar

0 found

DOIs verified

0 of 587

Peer-reviewed 40 Preprints 12 Grey literature 7 Add to inbox Save as alert

ScoreTitleVenueYearTier

94 What is platform governance? Gorwa Information, Communication & Society 2019 Q1

91 Algorithmic content moderation: Technical and political challenges Gorwa, Binns, Katzenbach Big Data & Society 2020 Q1

88 The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech Klonick Harvard Law Review 2018 Q1

85 Governing online platforms: From contested to cooperative responsibility Helberger, Pierson, Poell The Information Society 2018 Q1

81 Platformisation Poell, Nieborg, van Dijck Internet Policy Review 2019 Q2

78 Tiered governance and demonetization Caplan, Gillespie Social Media + Society 2020 Q1

Projects/ PhD proposal Active

No jobs

BriefReading listCardsPlanningTextsMatrix

Planning document

1 Introduction

Introduces the problem and its relevance

1.1 Problem statement

1.2 Research questions

2 Luhmann's concept of communication

Introduces the concept that chapter 3 applies

2.1 Connecting communication

2.2 Autopoiesis

3 Platforms as social systems

Applies the concept to platforms

4 Method

Document Insights Gaps

2 insights in 2.1 Connecting communication

2026-11-02
· i-01JD4K7Q

Gillespie's ranking loop is a case of connecting communication: each ranking answers the clicks that the last ranking produced, see luhmann1984soziale and gillespie2014relevance.

SourcesLuhmann 1984Gillespie 2014

2026-10-22
· i-01JC5Q2M

Self-reference in Luhmann and in Latour does not mean the same thing.

SourcesLuhmann 1984Latour 2005

2026-10-21
· i-01JC5Q2A

Connecting communication needs a prior operation; the first chapter has to say where the chain starts.

SourcesLuhmann 1984

SETTINGS AGENT

Context Plan: Proposal, 2.1

You · 10:51

✓ search: Luhmann, Gillespie, connection

✦ claude-code · 10:51

Both sources support it. Luhmann describes communication that connects to earlier communication Luhmann 1984, p. 58, and Gillespie shows rankings that feed on their own results Gillespie 2014, p. 168.

✓ note_insight: 2.1 Connecting communication

Noted in 2.1 Connecting communication.

1 file changed

projects/phd-proposal/plans/proposal/nodes/connecting.md

Undo

Ask something or request a change

04 Writing

Switch the citation style, and every citation in the text follows.

04 Writing

Your texts cite your cards.

Write in Markdown with Pandoc citations. Typing [@ opens your sources and quote cards, and the citation takes the style of the project: APA, Chicago or DGPs.

Export to Word, to LaTeX for Overleaf, to PDF or to Markdown, each with the bibliography in your citation style.

Projects/ PhD proposal/ Chapter 2 draft

No jobs

Citation style APA Export WordLaTeXPDFMarkdown

2.1 Connecting communication

Luhmann describes social systems as networks of communication. Human beings belong to their environment (Luhmann, 1984, p. 31), and every communication connects to an earlier one (cf. Luhmann, 1984, p. 58).

Gillespie points to the same logic in search and recommendation: “Algorithms play an increasingly important role in selecting what information is considered most relevant to us” (Gillespie, 2014, p. 167). gillespie2014relevance Source Thesisp. 167 Algorithms play an increasingly important role in selecting what information is considered most relevant to us. Enter quoteShift+Enter paraphraseAlt+Enter citation

W exports/chapter-2-draft.docx Microsoft Word

2.1 Connecting communication

Luhmann describes social systems as networks of communication. Human beings belong to their environment (Luhmann 1984, 31), and every communication connects to an earlier one (cf. Luhmann 1984, 58). Gillespie points to the same logic in search and recommendation: “Algorithms play an increasingly important role in selecting what information is considered most relevant to us” (Gillespie 2014, 167).

References

Gillespie, Tarleton. 2014. “The Relevance of Algorithms.” In Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, edited by Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot, 167–94. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Luhmann, Niklas. 1984. Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

05 Agents

This is the agent. It reads the same library I do.

05 Agents

Your agent works in your library.

The Agent tab runs Claude Code, Codex or Cursor on the subscription you already have. It answers from your cards and cites them. When you ask for a change, it writes into your notes and texts directly, and Undo takes back the whole turn.

cg mcp opens the library to Claude Desktop and any other MCP client, and the cg command line runs every operation of the app with --json output. Anything an agent adds lands in your inbox first. Connecting agents

Terminal

# connect Claude Code to your library$ claude mcp add --scope user citegeist -- cg mcp# add a paper by DOI, then search your cards$ cg items add 10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762citekey: vaswani2017attentionjob: j_01JD4M2X8KQ$ cg search query "attention heads" --kinds card --json{ "hits": [{ "kind": "card", "citekey": "vaswani2017attention", "page": "5",    "snippet": "Multi-head attention allows the model to jointly attend to information    from different representation subspaces at different positions.", "score": 0.91 }] }

Open source

citegeist is open source and keeps your library on your Mac.

Apache-2.0

The whole app is on GitHub. You can read the code, build it yourself and contribute.

JonnyFi/citegeist

Local files

Your papers, cards and notes stay in your folder. The search index and the embedding models run on your Mac.

Your own AI

The AI runs on your Claude Code, Codex or Cursor subscription. An API key or a local Ollama works as well.

Install citegeist

Open the Terminal, paste the command and press Return.

Or paste this into the Terminal on your Mac

$ curl -fsSL https://citegeist.si/install.sh | sh

or let your agent do it

New to the Terminal? The step-by-step guide walks you through it.