# Noteweave

> Autonomous R&D lab for research-to-deployment

- **Role:** Co-founder (Product + Research)
- **Company:** Noteweave
- **Period:** 2026 – Present

Noteweave was built as an **autonomous R&D lab** for moving research into usable work. The first product shipped in **April 2026** as a **VS Code extension**: search over **3M+ arXiv papers**, full-paper critique with **E3**, and cited planning inside the developer workflow. The stack uses **FastAPI**, **LangGraph**, **Elasticsearch**, **Qdrant**, **MiniLM**, **Gemini grounded search**, and LLM reranking. E3 was evaluated on **100 ICLR 2026 submissions** and recovered **90.2%** of issue-level review points ([arXiv:2605.27072](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27072)). Bootstrapped on **Brahma**, a second-hand laptop server, and backed by **Founders Inc. Canopy**.

**Focus:** Autonomous R&D, Research agents, Hybrid search, Paper critique, VS Code, Independent lab

## Supported by

- Amazon Web Services (Activate)
- OpenAI (for startups)
- Anthropic (for startups)
- Microsoft (for startups)
- Founders Inc (Canopy 2026)

Plus **~$50k** startup credits, a **$10k OpenAI grant**, and support from **Cursor**, **PostHog**, and **Sarvam**, after bootstrapping on **Brahma**, our second-hand laptop home server.

[LeadAgent fans out parallel search and E3 workers into the VS Code sidebar.](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/videos/noteweave_clips/exploration_agents_clip.mp4)

## Overall structure

The product covers two R&D steps today: **screen** and **understand**. A user gives a question or requirement; Noteweave searches the literature, critiques the strongest papers, and writes a cited plan in VS Code. The lab extends the same stack toward the third step: **deploy**.

**Take home:** **VS Code extension** on a **FastAPI** backend, with search, critique, and project memory tied to the workspace.

- **150+** extension + web users
- **3M+** arXiv hybrid index
- **100** ICLR 2026 eval papers
- **90.2%** E3 recall (partial)

![Noteweave platform map](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/images/work/noteweave/platform-architecture.svg?v=2)

*Platform map*

*VS Code extension, shared literature index, E3 critique, and project memory.*

## Bootstrapped on Brahma

Before any cloud credits arrived, the entire product ran on **Brahma**, a second-hand gaming laptop taped to the wall. It held the search index, the models, and the live agent sessions. We indexed arXiv, served real users, and shipped the VS Code extension from that one box in under a month.

**Take home:** Running it ourselves first cut cloud spend by ~90% in month one and proved the architecture before we ever paid for scale.

- **~90%** cloud savings
- **1** laptop server
- **<1 mo** to VS Code ship

![Brahma, second-hand ASUS ROG laptop used as Noteweave home server](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/images/work/noteweave/brahma.jpeg)

*Brahma, home server built from a second-hand gaming laptop*

*Wall-mounted ASUS ROG running the full agent stack before cloud credits. ~90% cloud savings in month one.*

## Search and critique stack

Built the search-and-critique path for Noteweave: turn a requirement into typed searches, retrieve papers, rerank them, run **E3** on full text, and write a cited plan. Search finds candidate work, reranking selects what matters, E3 judges reliability, and the writer only assembles after those signals exist.

### Query planner

- The planner expands a requirement into typed searches: **method**, **metric**, **failure mode**, **alternative architecture**, **dataset**, **efficiency**, **survey**, and the user's exact wording.
- This keeps the search close to the requirement while still covering adjacent papers a researcher would check manually.

### Retrieval

- **3M+ arXiv papers** are indexed two ways: **BM25** in Elasticsearch for exact terms and **MiniLM vectors** in Qdrant for semantic matches. **Reciprocal Rank Fusion** merges both lists.
- **Gemini grounded search** adds fresh web-grounded recall. **Semantic Scholar** backfills venue and citation metadata, so venue-specific search works from the local cache.

![Noteweave hybrid retrieval and ranking pipeline](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/images/work/noteweave/retrieval-pipeline.svg)

*Retrieval and ranking pipeline*

*Typed queries, BM25, MiniLM vectors, Gemini grounded search, RRF, LLM rerank, and cited output.*

### Rerank and read

- An **LLM reranker** scores title, abstract, venue, and citations against the requirement. Top papers move to full-text reading.
- The final plan links back to retrieved papers and E3 critiques, so the reasoning path is visible.

### Retrieval eval

- Internal **nDCG@10** eval: grounded search scored ~**0.41** when it returned; local **BM25 + dense** scored ~**0.33** with stable coverage; twelve-provider fan-out scored ~**0.13**.
- The shipped default uses grounded search plus the local hybrid fallback.

[Coding agents in VS Code](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/videos/noteweave_clips/exploration_agents_clip.mp4)

*Search, E3 analysis, and cited writing streamed into VS Code.*

## E3: automated paper critique

**E3** is the paper-quality judge. Pass 1 reads the abstract and builds a reviewer lens: **subfield**, **core mechanism**, **critical assumptions**, **expert checkpoints**, and **known failure modes**. Pass 2 reads the full paper and writes a structured review with cited evidence.

### What E3 judges

- **Technical summary**, **core claim**, **main risks**, **domain-specific concerns**, **strengths**, **weaknesses**, **forensic deep-dive**, **missing evaluations**, and **sharpest flaw**.
- **Dataset and deployment audit**, **productionizability scorecard**, **acceptance recommendation**, and atomic review pointers. Every criticism cites a section, table, equation, or sentence.

### Evaluation

- Benchmarked against human peer reviews on **100 ICLR 2026 submissions** (accept and reject outcomes), all post-dating model training cutoffs to rule out memorization, with a blinded judge scoring which substantive issues each source recovered.
- E3 recovered **90.2%** of issues, the highest among human, E3, and matched **GPT** and **Claude** baselines. The full protocol and results are in the paper ([arXiv:2605.27072](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27072)).

![E3 issue-level backtesting severity chart](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/images/work/noteweave/e3-critique.jpg)

*Issue-level backtesting results*

*Recall and severity comparison across human, E3, GPT, and Claude review streams.*

![E3 issue-level backtesting protocol](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/images/work/noteweave/e3-protocol.svg?v=2)

*E3 evaluation protocol*

*Post-cutoff corpus, blinded meta-judge, and 4,598 judged issue rows across four review streams.*

## Traction & funding

April 2026: VS Code extension and E3 paper shipped the same month. **Founders Inc. Canopy 2026** residency in San Francisco. **150+ accounts** across the extension and web app; early teams include **Dognosis** and **Audria**. YC Product Hunt application ranked **#17 internationally** and **#22 overall**.

### Programs & credits

- **Founder in Residence** at Founders Inc. Canopy; shipped **hybrid search**, **E3**, and the **VS Code extension**.
- Startup credits from **AWS Activate**, **Microsoft for Startups**, **Anthropic**, **OpenAI**, and **Grok (xAI)**; **$10k OpenAI Startup Grant**.
- Accepted to **YC Startup School**.

## Closing the loop: the autonomous lab

The lab extends Noteweave from paper review to experiment runs: propose a hypothesis, run it, critique the result, and choose the next step.

**Take home:** **Search + E3** moves from reviewing papers to evaluating experiments.

### Closing the loop

- Hypothesis, experiment, critique, next iteration, chained so the agent can carry a line of research forward on its own.
- Built on the same search and critique agents that already shipped in the editor.

![Recursive experimentation harness, independent lab preview](https://yashwardhan.space/assets/images/work/noteweave/auto-scientist.jpeg)

*Recursive experimentation harness*

*Independent lab preview, agents that propose, run, and critique experiments in a closed loop.*

## Impact

**VS Code extension** + **FastAPI** service. Hybrid search over **3M+ arXiv papers**, **E3** critique, and project memory. SOC-II Type 2 in progress.

- Shipped in VS Code: literature search, paper critique, and cited planning.
- Hybrid search over 3M+ arXiv papers combining keyword and meaning-based matching, kept current nightly and filterable by venue.
- E3 critique engine: 90.2% recall of real issues against ICLR 2026 peer reviews, highest of all sources ([arXiv:2605.27072](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27072)). Backed by Founders Inc. Canopy.

## Sources

- [noteweave.io](https://www.noteweave.io)
- [VS Code extension](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=noteweave.noteweave)
- [E3 paper (arXiv)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27072)

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