Persimmon: Research Simplified0.4.0

Welcome to Persimmon, the ultimate AI-assisted research exploration tool for iOS! In a world where scientific breakthroughs are accelerating faster than ever but many struggle to keep pace, Persimmon bridges the gap between cutting-edge research and everyday understanding. Designed for researchers, scientists, students, and anyone with a passion for discovery, the app transforms complex arXiv and SocArXiv paper abstracts into digestible, tailored insights using the language models of your choice. Whether you’re diving into machine learning, quantum computing, or macroeconomic trends, Persimmon makes research accessible, engaging, and available at your fingertips.

Why Persimmon?
The sheer volume of scientific research published today is staggering. Thousands of papers flood leading preprint servers like arXiv and SocArXiv each week, making it nearly impossible to stay informed without specialized knowledge. At the same time, scientific literacy is declining, with many people feeling disconnected from the innovations shaping our future. Persimmon tackles these challenges head-on by simplifying the process of exploring, understanding, and saving research papers - no PhD required!

Key Features:
- Customizable AI Summaries: Choose your preferred OpenAI-compatible language model (LLM) to generate summaries. Control costs and model preferences with your own API configurations.
- Switch Between Providers: Seamlessly toggle between multiple LLM providers (e.g., OpenAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, Claude, custom models) using secure, on-device saved settings.
- Tailored to Your Level: Set your expertise level (beginner, intermediate, or expert) for each topic to receive summaries that match your understanding.
- arXiv & SocArXiv Search Made Easy: Find papers instantly with full-text search across arXiv and SocArXiv. Filter by categories to discover what interests you.
- Offline Access: Save your favorite papers to read without an internet connection.
- Daily Updates: Never miss a breakthrough! Get automatic notifications for the latest arXiv and SocArXiv papers in your chosen fields.
- Privacy First: Persimmon respects your privacy. There’s no data collection, tracking, or analytics.
- Breezy Performance: Built entirely in SwiftUI with minimal dependencies, Persimmon is snappy, intuitive, and optimized for iOS.
- AI-Optional: Prefer raw data? Use Persimmon as a no-frills preprint browser.

How It Works:
1. Set Your Interests: Select arXiv/SocArXiv categories or topics that fascinate you.
2. Choose Your AI Model: Configure your preferred LLM and expertise level to personalize summaries.
3. Explore & Save: Dive into abstracts, search papers, or save key findings for offline access.
4. Stay Informed: Get daily notifications to keep up with the latest advancements in your field.

Privacy & Control:
We believe knowledge should be private and empowering. Persimmon stores all configurations and preferences securely on your device - accounts are absolutely not required. Optional cloud syncing of preferences is available via Persimmon Cloud. Your exploration stays yours.

Persimmon is completely free to use, with a setup time under 30 seconds. At best, it becomes your go-to tool for staying ahead of the curve. At worst, you’ve got a sleek, private browser for preprints. Either way, we’re excited to help you unlock the world of research.

Join the movement to make science accessible to all. Download Persimmon now and start exploring the future of knowledge - one paper at a time.

Version History Release 0.4.0 - "Help, I'm Syncing!"

Welcome! In this version, we wanted to focus on enabling you to access Persimmon from all the devices you may want to. To wit, here are all the new additions in this release:

1. User accounts and sync: If you use Persimmon from multiple devices, this one is for you. Now, you can make an account with Persimmon Cloud and sync interests across devices automatically! If this isn't for you, Persimmon is still completely functional without an account on each standalone device - we won't ever love you any less.
2. Articles by followed authors: A new tabbed view displays articles from the authors you follow. We're not fans of Instagram but this feed-structure is genuinely pretty useful.
3. "Feeds" page: A new interface for configuring sources (arXiv, socArXiv) and their respective subjects can be found in Settings.
4. Native PDF/link viewing: View the contents of PDFs or webpages from arXiv/SocArXiv inside Persimmon by default. This can be changed in Settings > Preferences to route to your default browser instead.
5. API status indicator: A new panel can be found in Settings that shows information (status, latency metrics, etc.) for all the APIs that Persimmon can call, making troubleshooting connection issues easier.

Other Improvements
- Streamlined onboarding flow for new users.
- Fixed a critical bug leading to incorrect author/article search results from arXiv.
- Fixed a bug showing no articles for authors from SocArXiv.
- Narrowed the OSF API to show only authors from SocArXiv and no other sources.
- Fixed a bug that resulted in incorrect removal of some authors common to arXiv and SocArXiv.
- Fixed a bug where the subject tags would randomly shuffle positions inside article tiles.

We're hard at work on a native macOS port of Persimmon (coming very soon) and more exciting features on the Persimmon Cloud side that make analyzing research papers using LLMs even more intuitive and expansive in scope.

See you in the next update, enjoy! 0.4.0 Apr 1 Release 0.3.0 - "Triple Threat"

Welcome! This is an exciting one. In this release, we got some big things done.

1. SocArXiv integration: We felt terrible leaving social science researchers out of the fun. Thus, Persimmon now supports another preprint source - SocArXiv! Read articles from the humanities, arts, social sciences, and many other subjects. Seamlessly blend multiple sources into a single feed or view them separately. Search for authors across both arXiv and SocArXiv and follow their papers. To enable SocArXiv, navigate to Settings > Sources in Persimmon.
2. Liquid Glass: Persimmon's interface has been updated to adhere to Apple's new Liquid Glass design aesthetic. UI elements now have a glassy look, interact fluidly with user gestures, and align perfectly with other UI elements featured across other apps and the system interface in iOS/iPadOS 26.
3. Caching: Remember how we said we fixed a couple of caching-related issues in the last patch? Well, we re-wrote the mechanism from the ground up this time - caching articles in Persimmon now should be both faster and a lot more space efficient with no increase in dependencies.

Other Improvements
- Enhanced iPad layout for article tiles to leverage extra space (Search and Author pages).

Enjoy! 0.3.0 10/15/2025 This patch contains the following fixes:
- Resolves Gemini API errors
- Adds missing quantum physics (quant-ph) category to Interests
- Automatically displays each provider’s type (Gemini, Mistral, OpenAI, etc.) after saving
- Fixes a rule that refreshes the cache for all pages 0.2.1 09/23/2025 Welcome! In this version, we wanted to focus on giving you the ability to follow your favorite authors. Without this feature, it was possible but difficult to keep tabs on researchers you like keeping up with. Now, with the Following tab, you can easily find the authors you're looking for, see the list of authors you follow, and get to their articles in one click.
Other Improvements
- Fixed Explore cache: Fixed a bug where old articles would show when the app was relaunched.
- Updated styles: Moved the buttons linking to the PDF and arXiv entries of articles above the abstract and changed the "Summarize" button to look like the other action buttons.
- Update default preferences: Fixed a bug where automatic summarization was occurring even though its default behavior is off and updated notifications to be on by default. 0.2.0 09/08/2025 Release 0.1.0 - "Search and You Shall Find"

In this version, we prioritized aligning our search functionality with arXiv’s capabilities. Now, you can refine your searches more precisely and discover the exact articles you need. Below are the full details:

Search Enhancements
- Advanced search filters: Added sort options and text filters to specify criteria like authors, titles, abstracts, and more.
- Improved multi-phrase query handling: Resolved an issue where searches with multiple phrases returned no results. Queries are now encoded and processed more robustly.
- Keyboard dismissal during scrolling: The on-screen keyboard automatically dismisses when scrolling through search results, enhancing navigation.
- Search by arXiv ID: You can now directly search for articles using their arXiv identifiers.

Other Improvements
- Toolbar buttons for sharing and copying: New buttons in the toolbar simplify sharing articles or copying their details (e.g., title, authors, link).
- Category tag alignment with arXiv: Updated our tags to match arXiv’s exact labels, ensuring missing categories like "nucl" and "hep" now appear in Explore and Search.
- Article caching optimization: Search results are cached for the same day in Explore, reducing redundant API calls to arXiv and improving performance.
- Accurate date display: Fixed a bug where publication and revision dates were incorrectly set to today’s date. Articles now show their true publication and last revision dates. 0.1.0 07/22/2025 0.0.3 07/09/2025