Structure discovery. Situated annotation. Scheduled drills.
LyveBook helps you study a document in three ways. It reveals hidden structure. It makes notes live in place. It structures your memorization and problem solving efforts.
Structure discovery
Done for you, once, on loadstructure discovery noun — recovering the organization of a document where it is not shown: where individual ideas begin and end; how ideas group into sections; where terms are defined; and so on.
Authors often work from an outline, but smooth it into continuous prose. When the outline is not visible, a reader has to rebuild it — marking where one idea stops and the next begins, keeping track of which term was defined in a paragraph twenty pages back. That work is tedious, and it distracts from your study goal at the moment.
LyveBook finds that hidden structure on load. An LLM reads the whole document and divides it into thought units — the smallest spans that each carry one complete idea, sometimes a sentence and more often a paragraph or several. Notes and illustrations may then attach to those units. Where the author's visible structure — sections and paragraphs — will do, tell LyveBook to use that instead.
Derived sections; sometimes a table of contents if the document did not include one.
Key sections automatically highlighted.
Uses of important terms are linked to where they were defined.
Important terms linked to an automatically built index or external resources.
Each thought unit viewable at several levels of detail, from gist to full text.
Search on meaning, for when you remember the idea but not the literal text.
Video and audio are transcribed, then segmented the same way.
Transcription lets media documents be read, but they can still play.
Situated annotation
Your work. Ongoing.situated annotation noun — a note attached to a particular thought unit, not the whole document; seen directly in context rather than looked up somewhere else.
A margin note in a paper book is situated, but private, text-only and stuck in that copy. A highlight in the text is situated but does not explain itself. A page in a notebook or app explains but is disconnected from the passage it was about. Situated annotation keeps the connection, adds the explanation, and allows multiple authors and various media.
Personal
Your private thoughts: a paraphrase, a question, an objection, a reminder.
Discussion
Shared notes; discussion threads in a reading group, class, seminar, or among friends.
AI Chat
A back and forth discussion with an LLM rooted in a particular thought unit.
Illustration
Images, diagrams, video/audio clips each attached to the item it explains.
board noun — LyveBook's representation of a document, with discovered structure and various note types. shelf noun — a curated collection of boards, usually ordered and annotated. A document is rarely studied entirely alone.
Scheduled drills
Optional, per boardscheduled drill noun — a repeated activity that helps you remember what you've read and practice the skills you've been taught.
LyveBook's two built-in types of scheduled drills are the most effective ones known to learning science. They work across all fields of study. But they require extra study materials and prompting that documents you study don't come with. LyveBook fills that gap.
Retention
A few minutes on the days cards come due, answered cold. The effort makes the learning.
What it does. LyveBook detects the key facts and makes a review card for each one, attached to the thought unit it comes from. Cards come due on a schedule set by how well you have answered them before. You answer in writing, from a blank field rather than a list of choices. LyveBook grades the answer.
Why it is built that way. This is the prescribed method for spaced repetition. Two findings have held across decades of studies: retrieving a fact from memory strengthens it more than reading it again; and attempts spread over days beat the same attempts in one sitting. LyveBook runs a standard spaced repetition scheduler.
What LyveBook adds. You can write your own cards, but LyveBook can make basic cards for you. LyveBook grades your answers for you, unlike many flashcard apps that rely on self-grading.
Practice
Real work, one drill at a time, each aimed just past what you can already do.
What it does. LyveBook breaks an exercise in the text into a ladder of drills — each a sub-skill with a checkable answer, aimed just beyond what you can already do, graded immediately. Eventually, you work the original problem on your own. Where the text has no exercises, or not enough, LyveBook can generate exercises if you want.
Why it is built that way. This is the prescribed method for deliberate practice: decompose the task, drill each piece at the edge of your ability with immediate feedback, then reassemble and test cold.
What LyveBook adds. LyveBook adds the breakdown into drills and the grading. This is much of what a human coach would do.
Review cards and problem drills are scheduled at the intervals that learning science prescribes. But there is no established schedule for the reading and annotation. That work happens entirely on your own initiative.
Reading groups
Read the same document together, with discussion threads rooted in the items they are about.
Public views
Publish boards under your own name, on your own domain if you have one. Readers need no account.
The Showcase
Examples of speeches, essays, papers and recordings already loaded and annotated, to inspire your own.
Start with any document you feel deserves a deep dive.
Load a chapter, a paper, a video lecture, a music video, or a podcast episode. Use the discovered structure as is or refine it. Then annotate, illustrate, and share.