Penn Professor Releases Free AI Research Planning Tool QuestionFirst

Konrad Kording (KordingLab), a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has released QuestionFirst, a free research planning tool renamed from his earlier Plan Your Science; existing users' logins and project data are unchanged and old links still work.

Confirmed

• Core workflow: researchers write down their question, significance, hypotheses, methods and analyses in turn, and an AI mentor critiques each item like a strict but well-meaning advisor—not offering praise, but asking "what result would make you change your mind"
• When structural requirements like competing hypotheses, clean controls, statistical power analysis, or success thresholds are missing, the tool pushes back and asks you to fill them in
• Features include discussing feedback with the AI mentor, real-time collaborative planning with co-authors, importing papers to visualize their argument structure, and pointing to rigor training resources where sections need them
• The tool is completely free; the author suggests researchers stuck on a current project try it directly, and also recommends it for fall teaching-methods courses or onboarding new students

Why it matters

Drawing on years of in-person mentoring and observations from the previous version of the tool, Kording argues that most research questions are doomed before the research begins—an insufficiently sharp question blurs everything downstream, and a common reason researchers get stuck is being unable to articulate what they want to discover. Unlike asking ChatGPT directly, which only yields fluent prose, QuestionFirst's value lies in forcing users to clarify their research structure and think through the question and logic before starting work.

2026-10-10 ~ 2026-10-10 · 7 related posts

• Konrad Kording launches free tool QuestionFirst to sharpen research questions before work begins — KordingLab · 2026-10-10
• Most research projects stall before they start because the question isn't sharp yet — KordingLab · 2026-10-10
• QuestionFirst's AI mentor critiques research plans, not with praise but 'which result would change your mind?' — KordingLab · 2026-10-10
• [source] Why not just ask ChatGPT? QuestionFirst enforces structure: hypotheses, controls, power analysis — KordingLab · 2026-10-10
• QuestionFirst lets you chat with an AI mentor, plan with collaborators, and dissect papers — KordingLab · 2026-10-10
• [source] KordingLab renames Plan Your Science, keeps free AI science-planning tool for researchers — KordingLab · 2026-10-10
• [source] Penn's Konrad Kording launches QuestionFirst, a free AI mentor for sharpening research questions — KordingLab · 2026-10-10