How to learn a topic from scratch with Learnfold

You know nothing about a subject yet, and you'd like that to change without first reading three "complete beginner's guides" that each assume something different. Learnfold starts from the question you actually have. You type it, approve a short course plan, and read lessons written section by section, with a choice at the end of each one about where to go next.

Here is what the first ten minutes look like, using one example the whole way through. How long each step takes depends on the topic and on which AI you chose, so treat "ten minutes" as a rough shape and not a stopwatch.

Type the question you actually have

Say you've been handed a jar of sourdough starter by a friend, along with instructions you don't understand. You don't need to know the right vocabulary. Type the question the way it sits in your head.

What is actually happening inside a sourdough starter?

That's enough. If you had a web link, a PDF, some notes or a photo, you could start from that instead, but a question is a perfectly good first move. If you want help phrasing it, there's a guide on writing better questions for an AI tutor.

Look at the plan before anything is written

Learnfold proposes a course plan and waits. Nothing is written until you approve it.

It's tempting to approve straight away. Read the plan first and ask yourself whether it answers your question. For the starter example, you might hope to see topics along the lines of what lives in the jar, where the bubbles come from and why it smells sour. If the plan wanders into bakery business advice instead, don't approve it. Start again with a more specific question.

Read the first page

Once you approve, lessons are written section by section. You can read the first section while the rest is still being written.

Lessons are short pages. Where a picture explains something better than a paragraph, the page includes an interactive one. Finish the page, then decide what's next.

Ask about the part that lost you

Somewhere in the first page there will probably be a word you don't know. You don't have to leave the page to deal with it.

Select the passage and ask Why, How, or for an example. If none of those fits, type your own question about the whole page, something like "what does hydration mean here?" Discussions are saved, so the answer is still there when you come back next week. Some answers stay in the chat, and some become pages of their own.

Take a branch

Every lesson ends with "Where next?", which offers four directions.

• Go deeper. More detail on something the page mentioned briefly. For our example, maybe a page on one organism the lesson only named.
• Go sideways. A related or opposite idea, such as how a packet of dried yeast compares to a starter.
• Zoom out. The bigger picture, for instance where fermentation shows up outside the kitchen.
• Your own question. Whatever you were actually wondering, typed in.

Picking one writes a new page, linked to the lesson it came from. It's written in the background, and a small banner tells you when it's ready. If bread itself is your rabbit hole, our explainer on why bread rises is a good taste of the format.

Check yourself, if you want

At the end of a page you can take an optional check. It might be multiple choice, a written answer, or a guided discussion. You get feedback on what you got right. A wrong answer can become a conversation about what went wrong. Practice pages help you revisit lessons after missed answers.

Come back tomorrow

You will probably stop partway through something. Continue drops you on the exact page and spot where you left off. The course map shows every page you opened, with a "You are here" marker, so the side trip into yeast doesn't strand you. Courses and progress can sync across your devices through iCloud.

If asking is the part you care about most, the page on an AI tutor you can question covers asking, discussions and checks in more detail.

Before your first course

• A beginner is the worst-placed person to spot an error. Learnfold uses AI to write explanations, and AI makes mistakes. When you know nothing about a subject yet, a wrong sentence reads exactly like a right one. Check anything important against a reliable source, and treat Learnfold as a tutor, not a textbook.
• "Teach me chemistry" gives the plan very little to go on. "Why does salt melt ice on the road?" gives it a place to start. From there, Zoom out can widen the course toward chemistry in general.
• You can try the format first. The starter practice course can be read without paying. Writing your own courses needs a plan, listed at learnfold.app/#pricing.

If you need a qualification

If you are learning from scratch because you need a qualification, Learnfold won't provide one. It gives no certificate or accreditation, and it won't follow a syllabus set by an exam board. It suits the person who wants to understand a thing and is happy to let one question lead to the next.