Read
Review a colleague’s draft with AI.Send it back as Word comments.
A proposal before the meeting, a manuscript for a journal, a thesis chapter from your student. Tell MindMax what the review is for and it reads the whole document, drafts comments on the exact passages — each marked major or minor — and writes a review memo for the author. You keep the comments you agree with, in your own words, and export them into a copy of the .docx as ordinary Word comments under your name.
- Exports from
- Word (.docx) · Markdown · text
- Sends back
- A reviewed copy with Word comments — the original untouched
- Runs on
- macOS (Apple silicon) · Windows
- Price
- Free app · AI plans from $10/mo, or your own key
- AI
- Included, or your own API key
The same review, two ways
Asking a chat to review a document is quick. Turning what it says into comments the author can act on is where the afternoon goes.
- Upload the document, or paste it in, and ask for feedback.
- Get back a list of points about the document in general.
- Search the draft for the paragraph each point is about — and wonder whether it read that paragraph at all.
- Rewrite the points in your own voice, so they read like a colleague rather than a chatbot.
- Open Word and add each one as a comment by hand, on the right words.
- Say what the review is for — or hand it the checklist you review against.
- It reads the whole document and drafts comments on the exact passages, each marked major or minor.
- Keep the ones you agree with, reworded where you like. Ignore the rest.
- Export: the comments you kept land on those same passages in a copy of the .docx.
- Send it. The author reads ordinary Word comments with your name on them.
Tell it what the review is for
A design review, a referee report and a committee sign-off ask different questions of the same document. Say which questions matter here.
- Write the focus in a line — “check the cost estimate and the rollout risks, ignore wording” — and the comments concentrate there.
- Or pick a criteria document from your folder: reviewer guidelines, a call for proposals, your team’s design-review checklist. The draft is checked against it point by point, and the checklist itself is never annotated.
- A focus decides where the comments go, not what it is allowed to see. A serious problem outside it is still raised.
- Leave both empty and it picks the review dimensions itself. Running it again replaces the earlier review and leaves your reading lenses alone.
Comments written to the author
Every comment is addressed to the person who wrote the draft: what the problem is, and where it can, what would fix it.
Flaws
A defect in the method, the argument or the design — what is wrong and why it does not hold. Real defects, not style preferences.
Unsupported claims
Where the evidence falls short of the claim, naming the gap: the missing baseline, the single test run, the source that does not say this.
Alternatives not ruled out
A rival explanation or a competing design, sketched concretely enough that the author can answer it.
Unclear passages
Where a reader cannot judge right or wrong — the term never defined, the step skipped.
Strengths
What is genuinely good and worth keeping, as specific as a flaw — never polite filler.
A review memo to go with them
Overall assessment, major issues, minor issues, strengths and the questions the author must answer, each point grounded in the comments. Plus a short list of things to check yourself before you send it.
Nothing goes out in the AI’s words unless you choose them
The comments that reach the author are yours. The AI drafts; you decide which to send and how they are worded.
- Each drafted comment has Adopt, Ignore and Ask AI. Adopt opens it with the AI’s wording already in place, for you to edit before it becomes your comment.
- Add your own comments anywhere: select the text and write. They go into the reviewed copy alongside the ones you adopted.
- Ask AI talks a comment through with the passage in hand — is this really a problem, what would a fix look like. That conversation stays between you and the AI; only your comments are exported.
- Every comment quotes its passage word for word, so it lands on the right words in the Word file, not on a page number.
Back in Word, comments on the exact words
The author does not need MindMax. They open a Word file and find comments in the margin, the review they already know how to answer.
- Export reviewed Word copy writes “<name> - reviewed.docx” next to the original, which is not changed; comments already in it are kept. A Markdown or text draft is turned into a Word document first.
- Tick the comments to include. Add the review memo as one overall comment at the top, and prefix each comment with [Major], [Minor] or [Strength] if you want the author to know where to start.
- Comments are signed with your name — the revision author in Settings. Labels follow the language of the document, so a Chinese manuscript gets 【主要问题】, not [Major].
- A comment whose words cannot be found reliably — text that appears twice, a quote too short to place — is listed with the reason, never pinned to a guess.
One review, from draft to Word comments
Most of the time goes into the part that should be yours: deciding which comments to send.
Open the draft in your folder
Drop the colleague’s .docx or Markdown file into a folder MindMax has open, and open it.
Start a review
From the AI menu choose Review this document… Set a focus, pick a criteria document, or leave both empty, then Start review.
Read as the comments arrive
It works through the document chapter by chapter, starting where you are reading. Switch the panel to Review to see the comments and the memo.
Adopt, reword, ignore
Keep the comments you agree with in your own words, ignore the rest, and add the points only you would make.
Export the reviewed copy
Export reviewed Word copy from the review panel, or from the ⋯ menu in the comments panel. Choose the comments, the overall comment and the severity labels.
Send it on
Attach “<name> - reviewed.docx” to your reply. The author answers in Word, as they would any colleague’s comments.
Where it earns its place
Any time someone sends you a draft and is waiting for your comments.
A manuscript to referee
Save the journal’s reviewer guidelines in your folder, pick them as the criteria, and start from comments that already speak to them.
A design doc before the review meeting
Check it against your team’s design-review checklist, so the meeting is about the open questions, not reading the doc.
A thesis chapter from your student
Comments on the exact sentences, marked by what must be fixed and what could be better — and a memo for your covering email.
A proposal against the brief
Use the client’s brief or a call for proposals as the criteria and see where the draft does not yet answer it.
A report going up the chain
Mark the claims that will not survive the first question, before your manager asks it.
Your own draft, as a reviewer would
Review it the way an outside reader would, then revise a Markdown draft from the comments you agreed with.
Compared with asking a chat assistant for feedback
| Topic | A chat assistantUpload or paste, ask for feedback | In MindMax |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | A list of points about the document | Comments on the exact passages, a memo, and a Word file to send |
| Where each point is | Yours to find | On the words it is about, in MindMax and in Word |
| Review criteria | Pasted into each conversation | A document in your folder, picked once and kept for the next run |
| Whose words reach the author | Whatever you copy across | Only the comments you adopted or wrote |
| A quick opinion | Faster — one message, seconds | A full review is minutes or more. For one question, ask in the assistant |
| Where it runs | In a browser, on any device | On your Mac or Windows computer, on files in your folder |
Where it gets hard
- Comments, not rewrites
The reviewed copy carries comments. Suggested rewording is not written into it as tracked changes — for edits to a Word file you own, see Word revision.
- Word, Markdown and text files
PDFs, ebooks and PowerPoint files can be reviewed in MindMax, but the reviewed copy is exported only from .docx, Markdown and plain-text files.
- It does not read the comments already there
Comments other reviewers left in the Word file are kept in the copy, but the AI does not read or reply to them, and replies are not threaded.
- Check the rules for confidential manuscripts
An AI review sends the document’s text to the model you use. Many journals and funders restrict putting submissions into AI tools; with a model running on your own computer, it does not leave the machine.
Common questions
Can AI review a Word document and add comments to it?
Yes. In MindMax, open the .docx and start a review. The AI drafts comments on the exact passages, each marked major or minor, plus a review memo; you adopt the ones you agree with, edit them if you like, and export a copy of the Word file with those comments in the margin under your name. The original file is not changed.
Can it review against our own checklist or reviewer guidelines?
Yes. Before a review starts you can write a focus in a sentence, pick a criteria document from your folder — a checklist, journal guidelines, a call for proposals — or both. The draft is checked against the criteria point by point. The focus decides where the comments go; it does not stop a serious problem elsewhere from being raised.
Will the author see that AI wrote the comments?
The reviewed copy holds only your comments: the ones you adopted, in the wording you kept, and the ones you wrote yourself. They are signed with your name, which you can change in Settings. The AI’s drafts you ignored and your conversations with the AI are never exported.
What happens to the comments already in the Word file?
They are kept. The reviewed copy is a new file beside the original, with the existing comments and formatting carried over and your comments added. The AI does not read the existing comments or reply to them.
Can I review a PDF?
You can run the review on a PDF, an ebook or a PowerPoint file and work through the comments in MindMax, but only Word, Markdown and plain-text files can be exported as a reviewed copy. If the author has the Word source, ask for it.
Does a review cost credits?
The review itself is AI work and costs credits in proportion to the length of the document, or is billed by your provider if you use your own API key. Adopting comments, writing your own and exporting the reviewed copy use no AI.
See also
The same reading engine for your own reading: guide, critique or study a document.
The use case, from opening the file to sending the reviewed copy.
The other side: edits to a Word file you own, written back as tracked changes.
When the comments come back to you, revise from them.
Why every comment quotes its passage word for word.
Focus, adopting comments and exporting the reviewed copy.