Guides
Reading your own files, properly
Each guide answers one question people actually ask before they trust an AI with a book — what works, what breaks, and where the honest limits are. No dates on these: they describe how the tools behave, and we update them in place.
Formats
Reading a long PDF without pasting it into a chat
Chat windows make you carry the book — copying pages back and forth, losing your place. This walks through what changes when the AI lives inside the reader instead, and the point where that approach stops helping.
Read the guide →Formats
EPUB readers on Mac that can answer questions about the page
Most EPUB readers have no AI, and most AI tools are not readers. What a discussion layer built into an EPUB reader looks like in practice, and what it deliberately refuses to do.
Read the guide →Formats
Opening MOBI and AZW3 files on a Mac
macOS has no built-in way to open Kindle-format files, and Apple Books refuses them outright. What actually opens them, what DRM means for you, and what an AI layer adds once the file is open.
Read the guide →Formats
Reading EPUB files on a Mac
An honest three-way breakdown of Apple Books, Calibre, and Resage for opening EPUBs — plus a troubleshooting walkthrough for corrupted or unopenable files.
Read the guide →Formats
What formats Apple Books can and can't open
A full compatibility matrix — EPUB and PDF work, Kindle formats and Word documents don't — and what to do on a Mac for each one it refuses.
Read the guide →Formats
Asking questions about a scanned PDF with no text layer
A scanned book is a stack of pictures: search finds nothing, and most AI tools quietly answer from memory instead of the page. How on-device text recognition fixes that, with the failure cases stated up front.
Read the guide →How to read with it
Getting through a difficult book, without settling for a summary
A hard book defeats you on page 40, not at the end — and most AI reading tools only arrive afterwards, with a recap or a deck of flashcards. What an AI companion that explains while you read does instead.
Read the guide →How to read with it
Why summaries and flashcards don't get you through the book
Both work on material you already understood. What the flashcard research actually found — and why the step that produced the gain is exactly the one an AI deck generator does for you.
Read the guide →How to read with it
Reading philosophy without the AI quietly making things up
Old texts are where AI is most confident and least reliable — it has read far more about Kant than of him. How to work on primary sources, and the one behaviour worth insisting on.
Read the guide →How to read with it
What changes when the AI remembers what you have read
Every session with a general assistant starts at zero — you re-explain your background, it re-explains what you already understood. What a learner model actually changes across books, and what it is not.
Read the guide →Migrating
Exporting books out of Apple Books
There is no visible "Export" button. Where the files actually live on disk, how to pull them out cleanly, and why Apple Books sometimes loses sideloaded EPUBs.
Read the guide →Migrating
Reading your Calibre library on a Mac
Calibre is the standard for managing files, not for deep reading. How to open your Calibre books in a modern Mac reader without duplicating storage or losing your metadata setup.
Read the guide →Migrating
What Calibre AI actually does (and doesn't)
Calibre's "Discuss with AI" only sends the title and blurb, never the book's text. Why "can't find my book" is architectural, and how to turn it off completely if you'd rather not have it.
Read the guide →Finding books
Where to find free, legal ebooks
A verified directory of public-domain and DRM-free sources — with an honest fourth column for whether the file actually opens in a third-party reader.
Read the guide →Finding books
Reading Marcus Aurelius's Meditations with AI
A free public-domain text, why it's harder to get through than it looks, and what it looks like to read it with a discussion layer that stays anchored to the page.
Read the guide →Looking for how Resage stacks up against the tool you already use? That lives on the comparison pages. Product news and longer write-ups are on the blog.
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