Deepen: Deep Reading

You finish a chapter, feel like you understood it, and a month later almost
nothing is left. That is the normal outcome of reading, not a personal failing.
Reading is passive: the text goes in, feels clear, and leaves no trace you can
retrieve.

Deepen makes it active, and it takes about a minute.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Log the pages you read. Your progress bar moves.
2. Deepen asks you one open question. "What was the author actually arguing
there?" or "What did you disagree with?"
3. You answer out loud, in your own words, for about a minute.
4. Your answer comes back as concepts, connections, and the questions you still
have.
5. Those concepts join a map of everything you have ever read.

Speaking an idea back in your own words is retrieval practice, which is the
best-evidenced way to turn reading into memory. Almost nobody does it, because
writing notes is work. Talking for a minute is not.

THE MAP IS THE POINT

Every concept you articulate becomes a node. When the same idea shows up in a
second book, Deepen links them without being asked. Over a few months you stop
having a pile of separate books and start having one connected body of reading.

Read something about legitimacy in a history book, meet it again in a book about
organizations, and the map shows you the two are talking to each other.

ASK YOUR OWN LIBRARY

Ask a question in plain language and get an answer built only from what you have
said about the books you have actually read. Not the internet. Your own words,
with the notes they came from listed underneath.

NOTHING IS EVER SCORED

Deepen does not test you chapter by chapter. Nobody wants to be graded on their
evening. The questions after each session are open and never scored, because the
point is to make you think, not to make you correct.

When you finish a book, it asks once more: what will you still be thinking about
in a year? Your answer joins the map like any other. It is a lap of honour, not
an exam.

ALSO IN THE APP

- Keep the words you had to look up, with the book you met them in
- Keep the passages worth remembering, and share one as a sticker
- Scan a barcode to add a book, or import your Goodreads shelves
- A home screen widget showing the book you are on

WORKS WITH PAPER

Deepen never asks what you are reading on. Paper, library copy, hardback,
secondhand, an ebook, a PDF. You talk, so it does not matter. Nothing to sync,
no highlights to export, no cable.

BUILT TO BE PRIVATE

Your notes and your map live on your iPhone. The map is computed on the device,
so it works with no signal at all. There is no account and no sign-up.

FOR PEOPLE WHO READ ON PURPOSE

Deepen is for nonfiction readers who want the reading to stick: students,
researchers, people working through a field, anyone who has ever finished a good
book and been unable to say what it argued.

DEEPEN PRO

Deepen is free to try. Pro unlocks unlimited recaps, the map across every book,
and Ask.

- Monthly: $5.99
- Annual: $49.99 with a 7-day free trial

Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the
end of the current period. Manage or cancel in your Apple Account settings.

Privacy Policy: https://chamallox.github.io/deepen-legal/privacy
Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Support : https://chamallox.github.io/deepen-legal/support/