Questions, answered

Shamela Agent only works when all three requirements are met. 1. The latest Maktabah Shamela 4 (free), installed and opened once. 2. An Apple silicon Mac or a Windows 10/11 PC. 3. A Claude or ChatGPT account or an API key for AI features in Shamela Agent.

An AI assistant for Maktabah Shamela on Mac and Windows, in its own window or inside Shamela. It searches and reads the books in your library and answers with the book, volume and page.

No. Shamela Agent is an independent, third-party add-on made by Takhrij Hadith Lab. It isn’t made, endorsed or supported by Maktabah Shamela or its owners, so please send questions about it to us, not to Shamela.

No. You pay only for Shamela Agent: the app, its research tools and the services that run it. Maktabah Shamela and its books are free from their owners at shamela.ws, and Shamela Agent doesn’t include, sell or redistribute them.

Shamela Agent is opening to the waitlist first, in small groups. Join with your email on the home page and we’ll write when your spot opens.

The interface is in Arabic and English. Ask in any language and it answers in the language of your question.

No, it only reads them. To appear inside Shamela it adds a small hook to the app, which you can remove at any time.

No. In ⚙ › AI & usage, select Connect. Shamela Agent uses the Claude Code or Codex command-line tool already on your computer or installs it for you. If you need to sign in, it opens your browser.

Either a plan or an API key. Plans: ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus & Pro (Free has lower limits); Claude Pro, Max & Team (Claude’s free plan doesn’t include Claude Code). Or use your own OpenAI or Anthropic API key and pay per use.

Yes. In ⚙ › AI & usage, switch a provider from Subscription to API key and paste your key from OpenAI or Anthropic. You pay them per use instead of using your plan’s limits. The key is kept in your computer’s keychain and sent only to them.

⚙ › AI & usage shows what’s left of your Claude or ChatGPT plan: the 5-hour session and the weekly limit, with when each resets. It’s read from Claude Code and Codex themselves, and checking it doesn’t use your plan.

Yes. Pick the provider, model and effort in the composer; the next answer uses your choice.

No. You sign in inside the official tools from OpenAI and Anthropic, and an API key stays in your computer’s keychain. Nothing reaches us.

A card appears in the chat. Connect again from it and your question is sent again, in the main chat, the Side agent and Space.

Every claim carries the book, volume and printed page. Click a number to see that page in Sources with the passage highlighted, then open it in Shamela if you like. Your project files get teal numbers, and web pages grey chips. How sources appear.

A chat beside the book you’re reading. It knows the page in front of you, and text you highlight is quoted in your question. More on the Side agent.

Yes. Use the scope button below the composer to choose categories, authors, specific books or an era (by the author’s death year). In a project, a Project Scope sets where every new chat starts. How search scope works.

Yes. Turn on Web in the composer and the agent can add fatwas of recognised bodies, context for today and pictures from the web, with the library still the main source. Web sources appear as grey chips and open in a browser tab beside the chat. How Web grounding works.

Answers can include tables, cards, chains of narration, timelines, calculators and quizzes, each with its sources. See all 70 components.

Yes. Settings has four levels: Off, Light, Balanced and Rich. The Side agent has its own level, up to Balanced, and starts at Light.

Book pages and covers come from Shamela’s own scans. Pictures of places and objects come from Wikipedia and are always labelled as being from outside the books.

Yes. Share creates a public link to the question and answer with its sources. Stop sharing at any time and the link stops working.

Type @ in the composer and pick a book, a section, a project file or another chat. That question searches only what you picked; the book you have open and recent ones come first.

Yes. Type / in the main chat or the Side agent and pick a skill for this question. Otherwise the agent picks skills by itself.

Yes. In Chat Scope or Project Scope, switch the Books tab to Authors and pick them. The agent searches their books, together with the categories and era you chose.

Yes. Ask it to quiz you and it asks one question, then checks your reply with sources. It can also give hints only, or keep to the length, school or tone you ask for.

Yes. A deleted chat goes to Trash, with Undo right away. Settings › Privacy & data opens Archived chats and Trash, where you restore a chat or delete it for good.

Workspaces for your research. A project keeps its chats and saved passages together, and can hold instructions and context files (PDF, Word, images and text) that apply to every chat in it. How projects work.

A workspace beside your Shamela library for pages, tables, surveys, reviews and dashboards. You lead the research; the agent reads the books, builds and writes with you, and every quote stays tied to its page. More on Space.

A skill saves a research method, like the steps of a takhrij: what to read and in what order. The agent opens it when a question fits, and you can make your own. More on skills.

Tasks the agent runs on a schedule, from once to yearly, or when something happens. Start from 49 research templates in 12 groups, or write your own. Results arrive as a chat or in Space.

It learns how you like your research done and remembers your corrections, so you don’t have to say it twice. In Settings › Personalisation, Clear what it learned removes the books, notes and facts it learned. More on memory.

Yes. Share a page with a link to view or edit and work on it at the same time. Comment in the margin, and import your supervisor’s Word comments and tracked changes. Shared pages, comments and attachments are encrypted end to end.

Yes. Quotes from books, ayahs and hadith stay tied to their page, with footnotes and a bibliography in seven citation styles, from traditional Arabic to Chicago, APA and Malaysian university styles. Export to Word with real footnotes, Markdown or PDF.

On your computer. Only a page you choose to share is sent, encrypted end to end.

To OpenAI or Anthropic, through your account. Your chats are saved on your computer.

No. It reads Shamela’s books, web pages when Web is on, and only the files you attach or add to a project yourself.

On your computer, in the Shamela-AI folder. We have no copy, and they stay in place if you remove Shamela Agent.

No. There are no cookies or ads. We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and doesn’t identify you. Your light or dark choice is kept in your browser.

Your AI provider (which also runs the agent’s web searches when Web is on), our site to check for updates, Shamela’s servers for page scans, and Wikipedia for pictures. Pages you open in the built-in browser load from their own sites, with their icons, and searches typed in its address bar go to Google. The Privacy Policy has the details.

Apple silicon Macs (macOS 13 or later) and Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, including ARM. Intel Macs aren’t supported yet.

No. You install only Shamela Agent, not the tens of gigabytes of books, so it’s ready right away. It reads the books already in your Maktabah Shamela, so install Shamela first.

That’s expected: the app isn’t registered with Apple. Click Open Anyway, as in the Setup steps.

Expected: the file isn’t signed yet. In Edge, press the arrow beside Delete, then Keep anyway (Chrome doesn’t ask). When you open it, click More info, then Run anyway.

Install the tool yourself, then press Connect again. Copy the command into Terminal (Mac) or PowerShell (Windows):

Claude Code · Mac (Terminal)

Windows (PowerShell)

Codex (ChatGPT) · Mac (Terminal)

Windows (PowerShell)

Automatically. It checks for updates when Shamela opens; when one is found it’s downloaded and verified, and a blue button appears next to Settings. Restart Shamela to install it.

Shamela Agent is reapplied automatically: on a Mac, reopen Shamela when the notice appears; on Windows, at your next sign-in.

Open Settings › Updates › Repair or remove Shamela Agent…, then press Remove, on Mac and Windows. Your chats stay on your computer.