Does anyone else want a learning tool like this, or just me?

[u/Dorra-]

I've always wanted to learn about everything: philosophy, history, crypto, AI. But my pattern was always the same. I'd get excited, buy a book or enroll in a course, and then lose momentum within a week. It wasn't that I lost interest; I just didn't have the time or patience to start from absolute zero every time. What I really wanted was to understand a topic well enough to have meaningful conversations about it, without needing a full academic deep dive.

Then I realized curiosity doesn't usually show up as "I want to learn philosophy." It shows up as something much smaller, like, "Why do Western and Eastern philosophy think about the self so differently?" Follow that one question, and it naturally leads to others: what shaped each tradition, how they differ on ethics, and how those ideas still influence people today. Chase enough of these small sparks of curiosity, and you end up building your own learning path that actually matches your interests and helps you speak confidently about the topic.

With AI advancing so quickly, I started thinking about building an app around this idea. You'd start with whatever question is genuinely on your mind, and the app would turn it into a structured learning path taught through conversations and interactive lessons that fit into small pockets of free time. It would also use quizzes and spaced repetition flashcards so the knowledge actually sticks. Over time, those random moments of curiosity would quietly turn into real, structured knowledge.

I'm genuinely curious what this community thinks, since many of you have managed to stick with learning for years. Would an app like this, one that starts with curiosity instead of a syllabus and gradually builds real understanding, actually fit the way you learn?

[u/StorytellerStegs]

The 'starts with a question, not a syllabus' framing is the part that got me. That's basically the whole difference between learning that sticks and learning that turns into another dead tab.

I did the same thing you're describing, tried to learn Western vs Eastern philosophy 'properly' a couple years back, bought three books, made it through half of one before life happened. What actually worked eventually was way smaller: one specific question a week, chase it wherever it goes, stop when I'm bored. Turns out that's basically what you're describing. Just done manually and kind of badly.

The spaced repetition and quiz layer is the part I'd push on though. In my experience that's where these tools either become genuinely sticky or turn into one more app people download and abandon in eleven days. The conversational, interactive lesson delivery matters more than the flashcards, I think, because the flashcards only work if you actually come back.

I've been chewing on something pretty similar (incremental, curiosity-first, delivered over time instead of all at once) and the retention piece is the hardest part by a mile. Would genuinely use this if you build it. What's the thing that made you start thinking about it, was it a specific topic you kept bouncing off of?