# Reading and reviewing with an external AI agent

URL: https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/reading-and-reviewing-with-an-agent/
Last verified: 2026-11-11

> How a connected AI app reads a long book, sees figures and scanned pages, reviews a paper like a referee, and leaves notes you can answer in MindMax.

## Reading and reviewing with an external AI agent

A connected AI app can read a whole book, look at the figures inside a PDF, and review a paper the
way a referee would — using your own library, with its own model, and leaving its notes where you
can answer them. Two things make this more than pasting the file into a chat window: a long document
arrives as a **map** the app can navigate, and pages can arrive as **images** so charts, formulas and
scans are not silently invisible.

## Before you start[​](https://mindmax.me/#before-you-start)

- An app [connected to this workspace](https://mindmax.me/docs/getting-started/connect-an-ai-agent/). Reading works
at **Read only** too; writing notes back needs **Collaborate**.

- The book, paper or scan in a folder MindMax has opened.

- One sentence naming what you want back — see [handing work to an agent](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/handing-work-to-an-agent/).

## Long books: map, drill down, read back[​](https://mindmax.me/#long-books-map-drill-down-read-back)

A short document comes back whole. A long one comes back as its map: two levels of structure, a note
per chapter, a section id for each, and a list of tables, figures and references with their pages. A
550-page book is about 12k characters of map — enough for the app to decide which chapters to read
without pulling every page into its context. It then reads those sections whole, one at a time.

Read the book I have open in MindMax as a referee would. Start from the map, read the two chapters
where the method is defined, and leave the problems as comments on the passages. Don't change anything.

[Searching your folder](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/searching-your-folder/) is the narrow path for one exact
sentence; the map is the path for "what does this book actually argue". The same three calls power
[long jobs with an agent](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/long-jobs-with-an-agent/), where `doc_map_notes` writes
chapter notes back into that map and `reading_guide` runs a full annotation pass.

## Let it see the page, not just the text layer[​](https://mindmax.me/#let-it-see-the-page-not-just-the-text-layer)

This is the part an external agent cannot do on its own. What it receives from a PDF is normally
text; a chart, a formula set as an image, a two-column layout or a scanned page is simply absent.
Ask MindMax to render the pages and hand them over as images:

Treat pages 12–15 of the paper I have open in MindMax as images and tell me the trend in Figure 3.
Don't guess it from the body text.

`read_document {path, pages: "12-15", as: "image"}` returns **up to four pages per call**, and the
result carries the parameters for the next batch. A single page is `"12"`. To read small print or one
chart closely, the app adds `region {x, y, width, height}` as fractions from 0 to 1 — the lower half
of a page is `{x: 0, y: 0.5, width: 1, height: 0.5}` — and MindMax renders that part larger. Image
files come back as the image itself. A `.pptx` cannot be rendered as a page image here; the app can
read its text by slide, or you can look at the slide in MindMax.

If a scan has no text layer, looking at the page is the first step, not a dead end. To give MindMax
searchable text, the app can run the `ocr` pipeline: its own model transcribes the pages page by
page, and MindMax checks and saves the result with a per-page quality record. That costs roughly one
pass over the material, so ask it to tell you before transcribing a whole book. See
[recognising scanned PDFs](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/scanned-pdf-ocr/) for what the quality report means.

## Four lenses, plus three ready-made jobs[​](https://mindmax.me/#four-lenses-plus-three-ready-made-jobs)

`reading_guide` runs a full annotation pass with a chosen lens:

| Lens | The question it answers |
| --- | --- |
| Guide | What is this saying, chapter by chapter, and where should I slow down? |
| Review | What is wrong with the argument, as a referee would put it? |
| Critical | Which assumptions, gaps and leaps does the evidence not support? |
| Study | What should I be able to answer afterwards, and what should I test myself on? |

The [prompts a host can show in its / menu](https://mindmax.me/docs/reference/agent-tools/#prompts) cover the same
jobs without a long sentence: `prepare-book` writes a chapter map and then a prioritised reading
guide, `review-paper` reads a paper like a referee and leaves comments, `critical-read` marks the
assumptions, and `study-guide` turns a document into questions you answer yourself. For a worked
seven-step path, see
[review a paper with your agent](https://mindmax.me/use-cases/review-a-paper-with-your-agent/) and
[have your agent annotate a book you are reading](https://mindmax.me/use-cases/annotate-a-book-with-your-agent/).

## Comments to answer, or notes to read[​](https://mindmax.me/#comments-to-answer-or-notes-to-read)

Both land in the margin, but they are not the same thing:

- **A few opinions you need to respond to** — "this number is wrong", "this claim needs a source" —
go in as comments with `add_comments`. They enter the comments panel, are signed with the app's
name, and wait for you. You reply, and the turn goes back to the app.

- **A whole document marked up for reading** — highlights, lens notes, "stop here" marks — belongs
to the reading layer. Those notes appear when you open the passage, can be ignored, and do not
pile up in the waiting count.

The rule is the number of decisions you are being asked to make. Two or three challenges are a
conversation; two hundred highlighted lines are a reading aid. See
[reading and annotating](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/reading-and-annotating/) and
[AI annotation lenses](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/ai-annotation-lenses/) for the reading side, and
[working in the margin with an AI agent](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/comments-with-an-agent/) for the
conversation side.

**Read-only material stays read-only.** PDFs, ebooks and slides take comments and replies, not edits.
If a referee pass needs to become a changed draft, the app writes a new note or
[proposes changes to an editable copy](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/revising-documents-with-an-agent/).

## Common problems[​](https://mindmax.me/#common-problems)

**The answer describes a figure that is not there.** The app guessed from the surrounding text. Ask
for the page as an image and name the figure.

**Only four pages came back.** That is the per-call limit; the result tells the app which pages to
request next.

**The app says a scan has no text.** Correct — look at the pages first, then decide whether the
`ocr` pipeline is worth the tokens.

**Every highlighted line became a waiting comment.** Ask for a reading-lens pass rather than a
comment pass, or narrow it to the sections you actually want to challenge.

## Next[​](https://mindmax.me/#next)

- [Canvas requests with an agent](https://mindmax.me/docs/guides/canvas-requests-with-an-agent/) — when the question
is not in the text but in what you are trying to decide.

- [Understanding a paper outside your field](https://mindmax.me/use-cases/understand-a-paper-fast/) — the same
material read inside MindMax.

Last updated on **Nov 11, 2026**