Simply explain 20k concepts using GPT
Hi HN! I made a tool that autogenerates simple, high-level explanations of concepts and organizes them in a somewhat university course-like structure so that it's easier to see how things are structured. Currently it has about 20,000 concepts on a range of topics but that's just what I generated so far, it should work with more obscure topics in the future. I love learning about random topics where I don't have a good background in like history or linguistics, but it's hard to figure out what topics there (you don't know what you don't know) are in certain fields and what they are even…
In plain words
Simply Explain is a tool that uses GPT to generate plain-language explanations of concepts and organizes them in a university course-like structure. It currently covers approximately 20,000 concepts across various topics, from common to obscure subjects in fields like history and linguistics. The tool helps users understand how topics relate to and build upon each other, making it easier to explore unfamiliar subject areas. Information comes from GPT's training data and should be verified independently.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN! I made a tool that autogenerates simple, high-level explanations of concepts and organizes them in a somewhat university course-like structure so that it's easier to see how things are structured. Currently it has about 20,000 concepts on a range of topics but that's just what I generated so far, it should work with more obscure topics in the future. I love learning about random topics where I don't have a good background in like history or linguistics, but it's hard to figure out what topics there (you don't know what you don't know) are in certain fields and what they are even about, so this was a way to get the high level idea about random things that I wanted to know about. It also only uses the information in the GPT model at the moment, so obviously information can't be trusted completely and you should definitely double check any information you read here by Googling. I'm thinking of doing the Bing Chat approach for the next version and adding references, but don't have that yet Hopefully someone else finds this useful even if it's not perfect!
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