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Show HN: Rebrain.gg – Doom learn, don't doom scroll

110 points by FailMore

by vintagedave

1 subcomments

This is neat. I did see one bug early in the conversation: "The submission shows an escaped/unfinished string: find . -name \." which looks like an error converting what the user chose back to an escaped string for the AI.
For feedback:
* Please change the colours. I can't read white text on light purple. By all means keep purple, just increase the contrast.
* Maybe keep it in a narrower column, again for readability especially since we're constantly switching sides left to right as we read the AI text and the 'You submitted' text. I also feel it's quite duplicated, I can visually see which option was chosen yet it's restated in 'You submitted'. Only show what's necessary.
* In the replay you shared I can still change active radio buttons. Make it static.
To more focused feedback:
* I really like the idea. Instead of an AI telling you the answer, you learn -- this is fantastic.
* Multiple choice questions are great, but eventually please move to freeform. An AI can evaluate that. (For example, after learning a bit via examples, it might prompt, 'How do you find all PDFs in your home folder?' and give a text entry field. In the past, you'd have to type exactly the string the app expected; with an AI, it can evaluate flexibly. So take advantage of this. It's an immense opportunity vs earlier learning platforms.) Also, people learn better at some point when you're not given answers (aka multiple choice) but need to write.
I think you're on to something. AI as thinking replacement is a worry. AI as a guided teacher is great. I look forward to what you do with it.

by RIMR

1 subcomments

I am not a big fan of AI-generated educational content, mostly because it's a great way to confidently learn falsehoods and misconceptions. I would prefer to learn from a reliable and reputable source.
I am also not a big fan of trying to beat doomscrolling. One of the defining properties of doomscrolling is that it is mindless and addicting. The moment you try to create a mindful, healthy alternative, you've already lost. No product will ever beat doomscrolling, only individuals dedicated to their own mental health are capable of clearing this hurdle.

by cyrusradfar

1 subcomments

My feedback reiterates what you're hearing about the cogintive load being unruly. If you want to "beat" doom scrolling, you need your mechanics to be as simple -- quick swipes and taps.
One potential direction, simple cards that are True/False.

by wpollock

2 subcomments

An interesting approach, Good luck with it! A nit to pick: find is not a bash command. You can run it for example from a Windows DOS command line as:
wsl find ...
You can run all Linux commands this way. Also, pretty sure that find's "-o" is the Boolean "or", not "otherwise". (Yet another example of why learning from LLMs is dangerous, I suppose).

by lambda

2 subcomments

The example you gave is just so buggy; why do you think that this is worth sharing with the world yet?
The very first question is full of obvious bugs.
You have 'find . -name "notes.txt"' selected, it then says 'You submitted: ls -R | grep notes.txt: find . -name "notes.txt"', then it responds:
'Thanks — your answer looks like it was partially entered.
'You picked find . -name "notes.txt" (good choice). The submission shows an escaped/unfinished string: find . -name \. The correct full command is find . -name "notes.txt", which searches recursively from the current directory for files or directories named exactly notes.txt.'
There seems to be some weird kind of quoting issue going on there. I would fix obvious issues like that before sharing this with the world.

by melvinodsa

0 subcomment

People are having fun with this. https://rebrain.gg/conversations/369

by networkcat

1 subcomments

Does this form based interaction offer any specific advantages over chatting directly with ChatGPT or Claude? Essentially the site is still powered by their APIs and it is just the interface that is different.

by a3d

1 subcomments

I like something here. The interactive - incremental steps of learning or teaching. But having to go through sort of quizes to just get info I need - may not be best for all use cases.
There is a reason chat bots work - it mimics natural human interaction.
But this can be interest pattern - for say AI driven personal tutor for math topic
Lastly - for love of god - pls do something with the UI - all colors and bubbles and I am totally lost just trying to make sense of what is going on. Look at reditt if you just want back and forth thread convo style. Life is simpler that way.

by LZ_Khan

1 subcomments

Improving the UI would only take you a few prompts

by dzogchen

0 subcomment

Maybe if you can deliver information in small chunks in an interesting way that doesn't require a large attention span, it will work.
But if I have to read a wall of text, it's not an alternative to doomscrolling, it's an alternative to reading a book or documentation. And in that case I'd rather read a book or documentation.

by noosphr

0 subcomment

Doom scrolling is when you just have to flip up. Maybe swipe if it's an advanced app.
This is something else entirely and requires far too much thinking for the label.

by hiccuphippo

0 subcomment

I thought this would teach you random facts in one-screen-sized tiles. This doesn't look like doom scrolling. But I like the idea of the user picking a subject, maybe combine both: pick a subject, it gives you facts about it, maybe a tile to ask for which path to take once in a while (swipe left to keep learning about find, swipe right to learn about xargs).

by LowLevelKernel

0 subcomment

Great tool How is this internally implemented? Would you be writing an engineering blog post?

by virgil_disgr4ce

1 subcomments

The color scheme is painfully low-contrast. I can barely read it. Dear god increase the contrast.

by Alifatisk

0 subcomment

There is also xikipedia.org if you want to doomscroll while learning

by eranation

1 subcomments

Great idea. It sadly doesn’t work for me, I went to pick a topic and some of the answers were pre-submitted, some of the questions did nothing after clicking “check”, then it just ended. Maybe it’s the HN hug of death?

by renierbotha

0 subcomment

I clicked on that link, saw clashing colours and a general lack of UX design principles and immediately closed it.

by LowLevelKernel

1 subcomments

Upon clicking ‘continue’ or ‘submit’, make it transition to a different color which will give a good user experience

by johnthescott

1 subcomments

wow. i like.
gripe: the "+New conversation" button is distracting, floating on the botton. what about floating a "+" in the upper right corner?

by ggsp

1 subcomments

I think it's a cool idea and I personally find using LLMs as a teaching tool to still be the most rewarding way of interacting with them, if done right.
Your obvious first port of call IMO is correctness of material, where there's room for improvement [1]. I deliberately picked Gleam because it's still a less known language.
For what it's worth, prompting Opus 4.6 in chat got me this result [2]. Sonnet 4.6 via the Workbench also got it right.
Agree with other comments about UX and design, and maybe also some of those around improving teaching style or gamification aspects, but the above is more important.
Good luck with this, hope you crack it! :)
```
  [1] https://rebrain.gg/conversations/368
  [2] https://claude.ai/share/0bb03f86-3931-40ae-81f9-17fcb86598bd
```

by rapatel0

0 subcomment

I think you should use nano-banana to auto matically create a "youtube short" that might make this more addictive like doomscrolling

by toddmorrow

0 subcomment

a lot of chat websites have a no registration mode so people can try it out

by myrloc

0 subcomment

Too many forms

by SilentM68

1 subcomments

Great idea! I too forget the many switches that the 'find' command can use. Anything that teaches and helps one understand the core concepts of any subject is always a good idea. I'm just not a fan of creating an account and password. I have way, too, many of those. Good luck :)

by nivcmo

1 subcomments

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