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Quick Guide: Meet the Library Assistant

Team Sefaria
Team Sefaria
  • Updated

Sefaria’s experimental Library Assistant is an AI-powered chat interface designed to help discover and explore Jewish texts. 

Built upon Claude technology, the Library Assistant is intended to help users utilize the texts in the Sefaria Library by: 

  • Locating relevant sources based on a user’s prompt
  • Offering opportunities for further inquiry by surfacing relevant commentaries and related texts
  • Providing ad-hoc translations of not-yet-translated texts in the Library

Please note: 

  • The Library Assistant is only available on the website and is located in the Sefaria Library.
  • To use the Library Assistant, you must be logged into your Sefaria Account.

To use the Library Assistant:

  1. Navigate to the Sefaria Library homepage. The Library Assistant will automatically appear in a panel on the right-hand side of the screen. 
  2. Type a question into the chat.
  3. Press Enter (on a PC) or Return (on a Mac).

To provide feedback on the performance of the Library Assistant: 

  1. Click the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons to indicate whether or not the answer provided was satisfactory.
  2. Type additional comments into the space provided. 
  3. Click Submit. 

Please note: Leaving feedback on the Library Assistant’s performance is optional. If you don’t wish to write comments, click Skip.

Suggested types of questions include:

  • What is this week’s parashah?
  • What do Jewish texts say about gratitude? 
  • Can you help me find commentaries on this source?
  • Can you translate this text into English?
  • Can you explain the acronyms used in this text?

Library Assistant Menu Options

To access the Library Assistant menu, click the three vertical dots icon at the top right of the chat panel. 

Options in the Menu include:

  • Restart conversation: Click to ask a new question that isn’t related to your previous query.
  • Give feedback: Click to let us know your thoughts on the Library Assistant's response. We use this feedback to continually improve the results.
  • Help: Click to learn more about the Library Assistant.
  • Opt-out settings: Click to turn off the Library Assistant on your Account Settings page. To do so,  select Off under the subheading Experiments.

To turn off the Library Assistant:

  1. Navigate to the Sefaria Library homepage, found at www.sefaria.org, and log in to your Sefaria Account.
  2. Click on the profile button, found in the top right corner of your screen, to open a dropdown menu.
  3. Click on Account Settings, the first option in the dropdown menu.
  4. Click Off under Experiments.
  5. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

Please note: If you have turned the Library Assistant off, you can turn it back on by following the steps above and clicking ON under Experiments.