Feynman

# Feynman

> "You learn by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting." — Richard Feynman

**Chat with books. Great minds join in.**

An interactive knowledge network built on the world's most important books and great minds. With Feynman, you can chat with the books you want to read to quickly understand them and explore the broader context around them. You can also start from a topic, and Feynman will surface the most relevant books to help you build a knowledge system grounded in them. As you chat, a continuously evolving network of agent-simulated great minds — scholars, scientists, practitioners — automatically join the conversation, so you read, learn, and discuss ideas together with the most relevant thinkers. Books, minds, and ideas are all interconnected nodes in this network — not isolated features, but parts of a navigable map of human thought.

What makes this different:

- **Knowledge beyond any single source** — a four-layer content system (RAG → Content Fetch → Web Search → LLM Knowledge) means answers draw on the work's text, metadata from Open Library/Google Books/Wikipedia, real-time web results, and the model's own training — connecting ideas across the full depth of available knowledge.
- **A network that grows as you explore** — there's no static catalog. Books and sources are discovered through topic exploration, search, chat mentions, uploads, and community voting. Every title mentioned in a conversation gets added automatically, expanding the network organically.
- **Great minds as living nodes** — great minds accumulate memory from conversations, becoming richer and more nuanced over time. They are not a separate feature but part of the knowledge network itself — connected to their works, their ideas, and to each other. You can upload your own minds — or anyone you admire — from a Twitter profile, blog, or text to expand the network.

### Why I built this

Feynman is **not** a replacement for reading. I'm a devoted paper-book lover — the tactile act of flipping through physical pages puts me in a near-meditative state, and nothing replaces that.

Richard Feynman rarely read a book cover to cover — he approached books with questions, pulled insights from multiple sources, and moved on when a book had nothing left to teach him. I read the same way. When I want to explore a new domain, I need to know *which* books are worth the deep read and how they fit together. This tool helps me:

- **Scout before committing** — quickly understand what a book covers and whether it deserves my full attention.
- **Build a knowledge scaffold** — when I'm entering an unfamiliar field, it synthesizes key ideas across multiple authoritative works so I can form an initial mental map before diving in.
- **Go beyond the text** — imagine sitting down with the author for a few hours; you'd learn far more than what's on the page. Feynman gives you that experience — because the AI draws on broader knowledge related to the book, every conversation surfaces valuable context and insights you wouldn't get from reading alone.

In short: Feynman helps you read the way Feynman did — not replace reading itself.

### Feynman Reading Method Overview (Video)

This AI-generated overview summarizes the cognitive science behind the method (Russian Activity Theory and Chinese metacognitive scaffolding) and explains the Pre-Thinking Stage that frames the learning flow. Watch the video here: [Feynman Reading Method Overview](https://youtu.be/PYwjd7X_bfg).

### Beyond books

In 1985, Steve Jobs said: *"Someday, some student will be able to not only read the words Aristotle wrote, but ask Aristotle a question and get an answer."* That idea stuck with me. Every book is a window into a great mind — but a great mind is far more than any single book.

If you could actually sit down with Aristotle, or Feynman, or Adam Smith, you'd get something no book alone can give: their way of thinking, applied to your questions.

That's why great minds aren't a secondary feature — they're an integral part of the knowledge network. Books, ideas, and thinkers are all interconnected nodes. Minds join your conversations, challenge your assumptions, and bring perspectives that emerge from the connections between works. You can also upload your own minds into the network to expand the scope of collective human thought.

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Feynman is an interactive knowledge network. Three ways to enter:

**1. Enter through a book** — Ask questions and get answers grounded in the work's actual content, with every claim traced back to a specific passage. A four-layer content system (RAG, Content Fetch, Web Search, LLM Knowledge) connects the book to broader context and related knowledge across the network.

**2. Enter through a topic** — Curious about microeconomics but don't know where to start? Feynman discovers the most relevant books, generates the questions you should be asking, and teaches you through conversation — all grounded in authoritative sources

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