Early access · Limited availability
Research, quietly done.
An AI research assistant built for serious academic work — qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Available in two editions: Sotto Scholar for faculty and researchers, and Sotto Student for doctoral candidates.
Most AI tools for researchers were built for general audiences and adapted afterward. Sotto was designed from the start around one constraint: your research data cannot leave an environment you control.
The problem
Uploading interview transcripts, survey data, or field notes to a general-purpose AI means participant data passes through third-party servers. That's a compliance issue most researchers discover after the fact — and often after data has already moved.
The approach
Whether you run Sotto on your own hardware or in a dedicated private instance on AWS or Azure, your data exists in an environment only you can access. No commingling, no third-party processing, no exceptions. That's a structural guarantee — not a privacy setting you have to remember to turn on.
From raw data to published findings — across qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods work, treating each as the distinct research paradigm it is.
Qualitative
Audio-to-text runs locally — your interview recordings are transcribed with speaker turns, formatted, and ready for coding. Ask Sotto to surface recurring themes, trace a concept across participants, or draft a reflective memo after a session. Grounded theory, thematic analysis, phenomenological methods — Sotto works within your methodology, not around it.
Replaces Atlas.ti, Otter.ai, and cloud-based NVivo workflows
Quantitative
Bring your datasets, survey output, and statistical results into Sotto alongside your research questions. Ask it to help interpret findings, explain what your numbers mean in relation to your theoretical framework, and translate statistical output into language your readers can follow.
Works with survey data, regression output, and descriptive statistics
Mixed Methods
Mixed methods research asks Sotto to hold two different types of evidence at once. It can cross-reference interview themes with survey distributions, help you write an integration discussion that speaks to both strands, and flag where your qualitative and quantitative findings converge or diverge.
Convergent design, explanatory sequential, integration discussions
Data Visualization
Sotto generates visualizations of your data directly within your private environment — theme frequency charts, participant response maps, longitudinal patterns, and distribution plots. Visualizations are rendered locally and exported without routing your data through any external service.
Export-ready for manuscripts, institutional reports, and major citation styles
Writing Support
Sotto understands your project structure, your literature, and your actual findings. Ask it to help connect a finding to a theoretical framework, draft a discussion section grounded in your data, or work through a stuck argument. It writes from your corpus — not from the internet.
Context-aware across your full document set
"Your data exists in an environment only you can access — whether that's your own machine or a dedicated private instance in the cloud."
Single-tenant isolation means no other researcher's data shares your environment, no inference passes through shared infrastructure, and no participant information touches a general-purpose AI service. If your IRB protocol requires documentation of Sotto's data architecture, we can provide it.
The same core capabilities, packaged for where you are in your research career. Both editions run in your own private environment. Both are IRB-compliant by design.
Sotto Scholar
For faculty researchers and independent academics managing ongoing research programs.
Sotto Student
For doctoral candidates navigating the full arc of a dissertation — from proposal to defense.
Sotto runs wherever you do your research — including on a Chromebook, a lab workstation, or a managed institutional device.
Cloud marketplace
Spin up a dedicated Sotto environment on AWS or Azure — no GPU required on your end. Access it from any browser, on any device, including Chromebooks and managed institutional machines. Your instance is single-tenant: isolated infrastructure that only you can reach.
Local deployment
Run Sotto entirely on your own machine — no internet connection required after setup. The highest possible privacy guarantee for researchers with strict institutional data governance requirements or fieldwork in low-connectivity settings.
Setup takes under 30 minutes whether you're launching a private cloud instance or installing locally. Once your research environment is ready, Sotto stays ready.
Launch a private Sotto instance from the AWS or Azure Marketplace — or install locally on a Windows or Mac research machine. Either way, nothing is shared.
Add transcripts, literature, working documents, survey data, and institutional files. Sotto indexes everything privately — it knows your project, not the internet's version of your topic.
Ask questions, surface patterns, generate visualizations, write memos, and work through your writing — in conversation with an assistant that understands your full project.
Automatic nightly encrypted backups to your institution's secure storage. Your data stays yours — in your environment, on your schedule, under your control.
Both editions are in active development. Early access is limited — let us know which edition you're interested in and we'll reach out when it's ready.