← The work

Author-grounded conversational study tools

Reading Companions

Most annotation comes from a stranger. Reading Companions replaces that with the author. The companion sees the page the reader sees and talks it over in the voice that made it.

A live session. The reader and the presence talk over the same page.

The companion

Each companion is authored from the public-domain record: works, letters, biographies, and the scholarship around them, prepared with university researchers and field experts. Reading becomes a conversation.

The voice sits close to the work; the companion remains plainly a study tool. Readers can talk with the companion aloud or keep the exchange to a written thread.

The current reader is browser-based and split-screen, with goal-based tone, repeat visits for web readers, and a memory-off kiosk mode for institutions. The first audiences are schools, libraries, and literary estates.

Browser-based Reading Companions interface with Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, and Kurt Vonnegut as selectable authors.
Browser reader. The current prototype opens with selectable author companions before the split-page reading view.

The author, beside the reader.

Book a walkthrough →