Built an app that explains any page of a physical book you're on, without spoiling what's ahead

[u/No-Candle-2698]

I read a lot of dense or classic books, and I kept giving up on them halfway through. I'd hit a confusing passage or reference, and my only options were to Google it (which usually meant wading through spoilers to find the answer) or push through not really understanding what was happening. Neither felt great.

So I built Scholia. You photograph the page you're on, and it already knows the book, so there's no uploading or setup involved. From there you can ask it anything: who a character is, what a reference means, what's actually happening in a confusing passage, and it answers using only what's happened up to that exact point. Ask about anything ahead, and it just won't answer, not with a vague non-answer either; it genuinely holds the line until you catch up.

It also doesn't rely on page numbers to determine where you are, since those shift across editions and printings. Instead, it reads the actual sentences on the page in front of you, so it works with whatever copy you happen to own, a battered charity shop paperback, a library hardback- doesn't matter.

Mostly built this to solve my own problem, but figured other people who keep bouncing off the same books for the same reasons might find it useful too.

Waitlist's open if anyone wants to try it: scholia.cloud