Show HN: Ruminate – AI reading tool for understanding hard things

We made Ruminate over the past few weeks because we were frustrated with how hard it is to read complex text with LLMs - research papers, novels, long articles, etc.

We found ourselves copy-pasting the text/file into ChatGPT, having chats about different parts of the text in different tabs, and bummed we couldn't easily track the best insights from all those conversations in one place. We wanted one place where we could stay immersed in the text, dip into lengthy and generative rabbitholes when we wanted to (in an unobtrusive way), and have a 'work product' of your learning process (all your notes in one place). No more tab switching - one unified interface centered around the text itself.

With Ruminate, you can: 1) Upload PDFs, EPUBs, or web articles and read them in our custom reader (PDF upload done with https://github.com/datalab-to/marker; headless browser automation for web articles) 2) Highlight text to ask questions, get definitions, or discuss with an LLM (that has context on the whole document, the pages you've read, and will web search too) 3) Save notes, definitions, and annotations (and view them all later in their own tabs)

There are loads of ways to use an LLM to save you time and offload thinking/learning/cognition - we want this to be a tool that actually enables/empowers you to think more deeply and understand more.

Would love your feedback - on the product, the concept, or even your own experiences trying to learn from difficult material (or learn with LLMs broadly). Much appreciated.