What changed my life was recoll https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/
I also looked into OpenPaper but in the end it offers nothing that recoll does not and recoll does it better. https://openpaper.work/en-us/
Marking PDFs, make them searchable and adding comments in Polar could be great for grants and writing a thesis.
EDIT:
1. I really DO like the webcapture feature. I often save importent webpages since I know they may either not be available anymore in the future or I can't find the link anymore. This feature seems smooth already. But how can I sure that your software will still work in 10 years? Do you have an export feature already?
2. I would really like to be able to have folders as a feature to sort stuff better.
3. Your blog does not have an RSS feed.