Personal Feedback about Study Assistant

Hello everyone,

I would like to share some feedback on the new Study Assistant in Logos, based on a recent hands-on experience using the free preview version.

My goal here is not to provide a technical review, but rather to offer impressions from the perspective of someone who uses Logos for serious biblical and theological research, both in academic and editorial contexts.

General impression
What stood out most to me was the quality of the responses. The Study Assistant produces well-structured answers, with clear language, solid theological grounding, and — importantly — reliable references. In several cases, it also pointed me to sources I might not have consulted otherwise, which is extremely valuable for research.

Key perceived strength
In my experience, the Study Assistant works very well as a research accelerator. It helps to:

synthesize complex theological discussions,
identify relevant authors and resources,
highlight connections between the biblical text, biblical theology, and systematic theology.

It does not replace careful study (nor should it), but it offers an excellent starting point and, often, a helpful roadmap for deeper research.

An important note on asking questions
One thing I learned quickly is that the Assistant performs best when questions are well focused. Overly broad questions tend to require multiple lines of inquiry at once, whereas more precise questions often result in surprisingly deep and useful responses.

In this sense, the Assistant also helps train users to think more clearly about the scope of their research.

Limitations and constructive observations
Naturally, the query limits in the free preview require some planning, but they also encouraged me to be more intentional with my questions. Considering that this feature is still in early access, the level of maturity in the responses is already quite impressive.

Conclusion
Overall, I see the Study Assistant as a very promising addition to the Logos ecosystem, especially for those who take biblical and theological study seriously. It has strong potential to support researchers, pastors, professors, and students in both discovering new sources and organizing theological reflection.

I encourage other users to test it, try different kinds of questions, and share their experiences here on the forum.

Best regards,
Marconi Vieira

Find more posts tagged with

Desktop App

Comments

Kiyah

Hey Marconi.

Can you give some examples of some of the questions you asked? I'm thinking I need to refine how I ask the research assistant questions. My experience is not consistent. Sometimes I get great responses, sometimes it totally misses the mark.

Marconi Fabio Vieira

Hey Kiyah, thanks for the question — that has been my experience as well at first.

What made a big difference for me was narrowing the scope of each question and treating the Study Assistant more like a focused research assistant than a general “explain everything” tool.

Instead of asking one broad question, I started breaking my research into one clear topic at a time, for example:

Focusing on one biblical passage or corpus (e.g., Genesis 1–2, or a specific Pauline set of texts)
Limiting the question to one theological issue (rather than multiple doctrines at once)
When helpful, explicitly naming the theological framework I wanted the answer to interact with (for example, biblical theology or Reformed theology)

I also noticed that questions framed around “How does the text present…” or “How does Scripture describe…” tend to produce more consistent and structured results than very open-ended prompts.

For me, the Study Assistant works best as a starting point for research:

helping surface key ideas
highlighting good sources
and revealing connections I can then explore further in Logos

Once I adjusted my expectations and my question style, the quality and consistency of the responses improved a lot.

Hope that helps — and I’d be interested to hear what kinds of questions have worked best for you as well.

Dave Hooton

@Marconi Fabio Vieira One thing I learned quickly is that the Assistant performs best when questions are well focused. Overly broad questions tend to require multiple lines of inquiry at once, whereas more precise questions often result in surprisingly deep and useful responses.

KISS principle works best e.g. Does Jn 12.32 imply universal salvation? provided a well structured response. As it did not consider Jn 6:44 (also with "draw") I asked Considering Jn 6:44, does Jn 12.32 imply universal salvation? and the response was also well structured. So I would not add multiple conditionals or restrictions initially; as in a debate.

Marconi Fabio Vieira

Thanks, Dave — that’s a great example, and I really like how you framed it around the KISS principle.

Your experience matches what I noticed as well: starting with a simple, focused question and then refining it incrementally seems to work much better than trying to anticipate every counterpoint upfront, as we often do in theological debates.

I especially appreciate your point about not loading the initial question with multiple conditions. Treating the Assistant more like an iterative research partner—rather than a one-shot debate opponent—seems to produce clearer structure and more useful results.

That layered approach (ask → evaluate → refine) feels very natural within Logos and aligns well with how we already do careful study.

Thanks for sharing such a concrete and helpful example.

Marconi Fabio Vieira

@Kiyah and @Dave Hooton — really appreciate both of your observations here. This discussion has been very helpful in clarifying how the Study Assistant shines when used iteratively and with well-focused questions.

One additional thought that came to mind as I was reflecting on this experience.

When I first started testing the Study Assistant, my instinct was to ask broader, integrative questions — the kind that intentionally span multiple layers at once, such as canonical development across Scripture, dialogue between biblical, historical, and systematic theology, and even connections to contemporary themes like human dignity, ethics, and identity.

I quickly realized that, at its current stage, the Assistant works best when those layers are handled one at a time, which is already very effective and aligns well with the examples shared here.

That said, this experience made me think about how interesting it could be, in future iterations, to explore some form of advanced or staged research mode, where broader questions could be approached intentionally in layers rather than all at once — perhaps guiding users through successive lines of inquiry.

Even as it stands today, the Study Assistant already feels like a strong research accelerator. But the potential for deeper, multi-layered theological exploration seems especially promising for those involved in writing, teaching, or long-form research.

Sharing this simply as a forward-looking thought inspired by the discussion here.

@Mark Barnes (Logos) and @Mike Brown (Logos) — I thought this perspective might be of interest from a real-world usage standpoint.

God bless you!