AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to ThinkTotem
Hi HN, I love reading non-fiction, but I kept catching myself skimming, zoning out, and forgetting most of what I’d “read”. To fix that I built ThinkTotem, a small web app that lets you upload a PDF/EPUB/article/YouTube link and then chat with the material until you actually understand it. What it does - Ingests PDFs, EPUBs, Word docs, plain-text URLs and even YouTube transcripts (≤ 4 MB for now) - Maps key ideas, trims filler and surfaces the essential concepts automatically - Runs an active-recall loop: Socratic questions, explain-it-back prompts, spaced-repetition style…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
Totem▲141Repo: https://github.com/nnnkit/totem Bookmarking a tweet/article/thread on X is one click, but actually reading it later is like five clicks — open X, dig into history, bookmarks, find the post, and dodge the distraction of new feeds and notifications on the way there. So I had hundreds of genuinely great tweets saved and basically never read any of them. Totem puts that queue on the browser new tab, so reading them is just one click away. No feed distraction, no algorithm, no AI, no server, no account — it's all local. In one sentence "It's like the reading…
Jul 2026 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
- 2
PDFToQuiz▲129As a former student I created PDFToQuiz to solve I problem I had in college, how could I be sure I knew and understood all the material in the notes if I couldn't test myself. That's why I built PDFToQuiz, it helps students test thier knowledge on their own notes.
2024 · pdftoquiz.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Snippets▲94The most important quotes from the best non fiction books
2019 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 4
ReadingNotes▲10Your read-for-me agent for X bookmarks, emails & articles
Apr 2026 · readingnotes.ai · its alternatives →
- 5
LinkBlink▲26Hey everyone! I’ve built an app that lets you easily create microlearning “bytes” on any topic and have them delivered directly through Telegram or WhatsApp. There’s also a discovery interview feature to tailor content recommendations, plus options to share what you create with others. I’d love to hear what you think! Here are a couple of short videos demonstrating how it works: https://youtu.be/1LwwF1iJynY https://youtu.be/bKXODFoS-9o https://youtu.be/ulDC94CxKFU Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
2025 · linkblink.tech · its alternatives →
- 6
Some of my best ideas were getting lost inside long ChatGPT conversations. I built this tool to turn raw chats into clean, readable posts that can be shared publicly and indexed, without rewriting everything by hand. It’s meant for people who think a lot but don’t enjoy long-form writing, and want their ideas to compound instead of disappearing in chat logs. Happy to answer questions about how it works or why I built it.
Jan 2026 · thinkinpublic.app · its alternatives →
- 7
Hey HN, I’m Lee. I’ve always felt that most learning apps miss the point. They push you to memorize facts, but they don’t really help you understand things from the ground up. I built StudyBlocks as a way to counteract this by breaking down your topic of interest into first-principles. How it works: 1. Pick a topic and break it into fundamentals 2. Take notes, highlight, and ask questions as you go 3. Test yourself with personalized quizzes and flashcards It’s designed to be lightweight with no endless feeds or fluff, just tools to help you learn. I’d love honest feedback (good or bad). Be…
2025 · studyblocks.io · its alternatives →
- 8
Hey everyone! I know that a lot of people want to make more time for reading in their lives, but don't always have the time to do so. So I've created Summrize, an online platform for reading FREE non-fiction book summaries. For each book, I've condensed the most important concepts, quotes, actionable insights, frameworks and case studies, and presented them in a beautiful format. You can save the snippets that resonate the most with you, and share them on other platforms too! We know there exist other similar platforms (Blinkist, Shortform), but my goal with Summrize is to make access to the…
2024 · summrize.com · its alternatives →
- 9
I built Read Fast after realising I was saving hundreds of things to read and reading almost none of them. It automatically turns saved content into a scheduled briefing and sends it to my inbox at whatever time I choose. New version since last post actually allows you to bulk upload URLs. So you can just dump links here and Read Fast will scrape and brief for you. Great for actually reading the things I want to. Curious if that resonates with people?
Dec 2025 · read-fast.replit.app · its alternatives →
- 10
Auto Mind▲13I’ve always been curious about big, complex topics; things like quantum computing, AI ethics, or philosophy, but I’d often get stuck at the very beginning. I’d open a dozen tabs, skim Wikipedia, and still not feel like I had a good mental model of what I was even looking at. So I built a tool to help with that. You type in any topic, and it generates a simple mind map; just a few high-level subtopics to start. Then, as you click and explore those nodes, it expands outward with more specific, connected concepts. The map grows with your curiosity. It’s intentionally lightweight and…
2025 · automind.hackyourgrade.com · its alternatives →
- 11LY
Almost one year ago I asked HN if anybody is interested to make a Web app to make reading and finding scientific papers smarter [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1664648]. No one did, at least no one did what "I" think is the best way to approach this problem. A a few month ago I decided to do it myself.<p>Meet JournalClub iPad app (absolutely free), http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/journalclub/id443819334? I have a recommendation engine in the pipeline that I would introduce in the next update (hopefully in a month or so). I really appreciate any comments, feedbacks.
2011 · its alternatives →
- 12
This is SpatialRead, a non-linear research paper reading tool that is truly yours. I tried all the "Chat with PDF" apps. They're useful, but I always felt... trapped. My research process isn't a single, linear chat log. It's a branching, messy, and visual process of connecting ideas. I'd get a great explanation from an AI, but it would just get lost in the chat history. I was still stuck copy-pasting insights into a separate app. Not to mention the subscription lock-ins. I built SpatialRead to fix this. It’s built on a simple idea: Your research tool should work like your brain, not like a…
Jan 2026 · spatialread.com · its alternatives →
- 13
Hey HN, the full story is on the page, but here's the TL;DR: I'm 35 and somewhere along the way I lost the ability to finish reading articles. I'd open them, read 2-3 paragraphs, get distracted, and close the tab feeling like a failure. My "Read Later" list became a graveyard of 2,000+ unread articles. I tried everything – focus apps, reader modes, blocking extensions. Nothing worked. Then I realized. 'maybe the problem isn't me'. Modern web articles are designed for engagement metrics, not comprehension. Sidebars, popups, related articles, comment sections – everything is optimized to pull…
Jan 2026 · parsely.obasic.app · its alternatives →
- 14TL
I was tired of having to constantly scramble to find a podcast I want to listen to when going for a walk or just running on the treadmill. I, however, usually have an abundance of blog posts or articles around the web that I'd like to read. The problem is walking is not very conducive to reading. So I made this quick and dirty site that pretty much works anywhere, no app install, no copy paste, no nothing. Just add the domain playthis.link before any URL in your browser and hit enter. It will redirect to an audio file that automatically starts playing. You don't need to click a 2nd button to…
2020 · its alternatives →
- 15
Hi HN, I built an app to solve a problem I kept running into: I’d read great articles or watch insightful YouTube videos, but within a few days, I’d forget most of what I learned. Taking detailed notes felt like a chore, and I'd rarely revisit them anyway. To solve my own problem, I built Curio. It's an iOS app designed for low-effort capture and active recall. How it works: 1. Share any article or YouTube link to the app. 2. It automatically extracts key ideas as bullet points and links them back to the original context (the specific paragraph or timestamp). 3. The app then generates…
2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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- 17
looking for test readers, offering XL-sized ebook samples
2018 · jellybooks.com · its alternatives →
- 18IB
Hey so I am making my own book reader and wanted to share it with y'all on hackernews and I saw a submission talking about DRM free books[0] so I decided to submit this submission on Hackernews to show what I am upto :-D I prefer minimalism so I have created three different flavors of it depending upon the particular use-cases and I have linked the most minimalist one as the submission. If someone is interested in a Epub/pdf reader, I have recently made one: https://epub.mirror.forum/ After making that, I was also feeling the need of having standard book downloads and…
Jun 2026 · epub.mirror.forum · its alternatives →
- 19
I built this app in less than 4 hours over a busy and noisy weekend to help me stay focused while studying, during my college days. Since then I have been maintaining this open source project. Its been quite a fruitful and enjoyable ride. Hope you all like it :)
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
NoteTube▲6Turn any PDF or YouTube video into a study system
Jul 2026 · notetube.ai · its alternatives →
- 21BA
I am a product designer by profession, and recently, I ventured into coding and started developing applications. Today, I'm excited to share a project I've been passionately working on. The concept is a voice-activated journal: just voice-record your thoughts, and the app will transcribe them into text. I built this to help those like me who struggle to build a journaling habit. Also has features that encourage habbit building like a streak/tracker and a threshold marker encouraging you to record a minimum amount. I used OpneAI Whisper to power the transcriptions which means you can…
2023 · main.d35lo6kdqvpjht.amplifyapp.com · its alternatives →
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Mimir▲7What would reading look like if it were designed around how people actually learn? I got tired of all the AI study tools that actually just take the cognitive work of studying or reading away from you, instead of building up your own brain. Reading today is also just not the best experience as you forget so much of what you read. I built Mimir, (readmimir.com), an interactive immersive reader that let's you upload any book/text, read in immersive reading with TTS, active recall, in-margin notes, ask-ai tutor, and automatically creates spaced repetition notes from your notes and answers.…
Jan 2026 · readmimir.com · its alternatives →
- 24PR
Hey HN, I built a PDF reader that can generate interactive visualizations right inside the document. The goal is to reduce the “intuition gap” when reading dense papers: select a concept, click Visualize, and it tries to produce a solid visual interactive app where you can rotate/zoom/step through (not just a text explanation). Upload any PDF, select text, click Visualize. Demo (no signup): https://zerodistract.com/try/pdf/67cdee74-810b-4f1b-af7d-010... Product link: https://zerodistract.com I’d love feedback, especially on what feels useful vs.…
Feb 2026 · zerodistract.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →