STORM

What it is for

STORM is an MIT topic-to-article engine: it searches the web, asks multi-perspective questions, then writes a long cited draft. Use it when the job is a Wikipedia-like first draft from a topic, not when you need a paper-screening table.

What makes it unique: the cover is STORM’s official demo article workspace — table of contents, generated draft, and references — from frontend/demo_light/assets/article_display.jpg in the Stanford repo.

Key features

• Pre-writing + writing — collect references and an outline, then generate the article with citations (README).
• Perspective-guided questions — survey similar topics, then simulate writer/expert turns.
• Co-STORM discourse — human + LLM experts + moderator, with a mind map (README).
• Python package — pip install knowledge-storm (v1.1.0 adds LiteLLM).
• Research preview — hosted demo at storm.genie.stanford.edu.

Who it's for

Best fit: writers and researchers who want a cited outline-to-draft, and can bring search/LLM keys to self-host.

Pricing

Verified 2026-10-22 (Asia/Shanghai) from the stanford-oval/storm README and GitHub license.

• Software — MIT. License fee $0.
• Hosted research preview — $0 to try at storm.genie.stanford.edu (README: 70,000+ people have tried it).
• Self-host keys — you bring language-model and search APIs; those vendors bill separately.

Limitations / costs

• Preview drafts are not publication-ready. README says editors still rewrite.
• Self-host is BYOK. MIT does not include tokens or search credits.
• Topic report, not a PDF library chat. For that, see Anara.

Alternatives

• PaperQA2 — Apache-2.0 RAG over your PDFs.
• Elicit — hosted research-agent composer.
• Consensus — Ask-the-research composer with Pro / Deep cards.

Official tutorial

Written path: README plus the hosted research preview and project site.

Website

https://storm.genie.stanford.edu

https://github.com/stanford-oval/storm

Source

Catalog row curated for AI Tools Nav. Cover is STORM’s official Streamlit demo article workspace (article_display.jpg): outline + generated article + references. License MIT; software $0; hosted preview $0.

Last verified

2026-10-22 (Asia/Shanghai) editorial check.