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Show HN: Create mind maps to learn new things using AI
Enter a topic and get a learning mind map generated by an LLM with links to learn more about each subtopic.
You can use it with local models (through Ollama) or external models.
If you have any feedback, please share it! Hope it's useful
Demo: https://youtu.be/Y-9He-tG3aM https://youtu.be/Y-9He-tG3aM
- airstrike 2y agoI'd say the README should have a pic of the results otherwise I have to install it and run it to see if I want to install it and run it Also why not host it online and let users bring their own keys?
- arthurtakeda 2y agojust updated the readme with the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9He-tG3aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9He-tG3aM I considered that but if I were the user I'd be wary of adding my own keys to a random person's website haha, but now that you mentioned that, since the code it's open-source I guess it's fine, thanks for the feedback!
- cj 2y agoThat’s cool! It would be great if you could easily expand each subtopic into further sub-subtopics. Was there anything particularly interesting about how you built it or the prompts needed to get decent results?
- arthurtakeda 2y agoI noticed that, at least with the models I tested (gpt 3.5, 4o and llama 3.1 8b), to get a response with just the JSON and then have it follow the exact structure so it correctly renders the topic and subtopics was the hardest part. Ended up having to prompt I think twice (at the beginning and the end) so it finally followed the exact JSON structure.
- airstrike 2y agoYou can use structured outputs to tell ChatGPT-4o to create specific JSON matching a schema: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/structured-outputs/introduction https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/structured-outputs/i... It's a bit annoying because the schema has some limitations but it works with enough elbow grease
- arthurtakeda 2y agointeresting, didn’t know about that feature, thanks for sharing!
- airstrike 2y agoThanks for that! You can use something like gifski to turn that video into a gif so that you can embed it into the README. Here's an example from the gifski repo: https://github.com/ImageOptim/gifski https://github.com/ImageOptim/gifski You can use the CLI version but they also have executables with a dead simple GUI if you're so inclined. I have only ever used the GUI and it's perfect on a Mac (just drag and drop your video into it). Not sure if it's the exact same on Windows but I imagine it's amazing there too
- arthurtakeda 2y agoNice! Will replace the screenshot with a gif, if that doesn’t work for me I guess ffmpeg may be able do that too, thanks!
- dr_dshiv 2y agoWould be great to have a video of it working so I can see what it does before installing. Thanks! Also, I’m generally interested in UIUX variations around LLMs. Hoping to see a round up of examples like this, at some point.
- arthurtakeda 2y agojust uploaded a demo on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9He-tG3aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9He-tG3aM thanks for checking out!
- wonger_ 2y agoThis reminds me of https://tree-of-knowledge.org/ https://tree-of-knowledge.org/, posted a few months ago on HN. The branching/exploratory/canvas approach is better UX than a chat box.
- anon012012 2y ago(TOK dev here.) Thanks for the linking. I'm sorry I could not keep it glorious (that is free and login-free). I got spammed by bots and I don't have time to discriminate so I made it BYOK and kept it at that. My idea deserves a better execution than this and so I don't mind if other people go at it. All the best. BTW, related to learning AI software, I'm working on something else... Calling it "InfoRush AI" for now, it looks like that: https://imgur.com/0tncarJ https://imgur.com/0tncarJ This is Python, BYOK, FOSS. Multicolumn synchronous browsing... orchestrated by the tree of knowledge. Going beyond and beyond. I'll post it on HN soon, (when it's done).
- hmottestad 2y agoDo you have any examples to look at? All I can see in the readme is a page with a search field and no mind maps.
- arthurtakeda 2y agojust uploaded a demo on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9He-tG3aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9He-tG3aM thanks for checking out!
- afro88 2y agoHow do you generate / validate the links to learn more? If they're generated by the LLM there's a really high chance they are hallucinated and won't work.
- arthurtakeda 2y agoto be quite honest, I don't, just manually tested with different topics and got working links almost every time but agree, that can definitely happen
- afro88 2y agoYou could have a second automatic step that searches the web for the title of the link and validates it or gets the correct one. Cool project!
- arthurtakeda 2y agogood idea, I'll add that to the improvements list, thanks!
- fao_ 2y agoBut with the amount of AI generated content on the web, in a year or two (or maybe less) surely this method will fail dramatically?
- downboots 2y agoHuman intervention would be necessary for any kind of reliable knowledge curation if that were the goal . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brain
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- artur_makly 2y agonice work! hmm...perhaps there could be some compounded synergies with my https://VisualFlows.io https://VisualFlows.io // also made with ReactFLoW. i will DM you..
- pryelluw 2y agoCould you add a screenshot based demo or example to the main page?
- artur_makly 2y agoi'm guessing you were referring to the OP's app? he just added the video demo. but if not, our main page IS the app ;-)
- pryelluw 2y agoYes, I meant your app. It’s a little confusing to get at a glance. Was hoping you’d add some kind of link where I could see a demo or some screenshots of how it works. :)
- artur_makly 2y ago1. Have you actually tried to click around and discover what it does? I guarantee in 30 secs you will understand and even be delighted. 2. There are literally links to 3 very different examples of what kind of flows you can create with it. 3. If all else fails - watch this demo: https://youtu.be/hOFhH0CTihU?si=lmMq9nJts_Kbr174 https://youtu.be/hOFhH0CTihU?si=lmMq9nJts_Kbr174
- andai 2y agoVery interesting! My first thought when seeing this is, could I use this as a "progress map" for a subject I'm learning? So add my own notes, and use AI to find and recommend more resources? My second thought is, can you build one of these for everything I've ever learned, and want to learn? I've long (15 years?) been waiting for a system that knows not only my interests, but my knowledge, and can use that data to find or generate the optimal learning experience for any subject. (Khan Academy used to have a big interconnected graph of how all the knowledge on their platform fit together (dependencies) but for some reason they removed it...) AI is getting pretty close, especially now that they've rolled out memory and conversations... wild times we live in!
- artur_makly 2y ago@andai check out https://www.perplexity.ai/spaces https://www.perplexity.ai/spaces its _kind of_ what you are describing.. it's UX is unstructured compared to a mind-map or timeline. But we are starting to see the nascent stages of where all this is going. exciting times indeed.
- arthurtakeda 2y agothat's a very interesting use case, could be the long-term vision for the project, thanks for sharing!
- hm-nah 2y agoSmells like a knowledge graph
- matly 2y agoYou could take a look at Obsidian [1], or similar knowledge management tools. There is certainly a lot of movement in the plugin ecosystem right now, for example the obsidian-canvas-llm-extender [2], which (likely) does what you're asking for. 1: https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/ 2: https://github.com/phasip/obsidian-canvas-llm-extender https://github.com/phasip/obsidian-canvas-llm-extender
- soco 2y ago
- SuperHeavy256 2y agoI love the idea but, I have no Open AI API credits
- arthurtakeda 2y agoIf you setup Ollama and download a local model, all you have to do is follow the readme instructions, let me know if you need any help!
- airstrike 2y ago"OpenAI API" has sort of become a standard API for any models through other tools which expose identical end points regardless of the underlying model. You can use ollama for that
- null0pointer 2y agoI like this a lot. Great for autodidacts like myself. Often when entering a new topic I’m faced with many unknown unknowns. I don’t know _what_ I should be learning. So having an LLM effectively lay out a course of study would be very helpful.
- arthurtakeda 2y agoglad you liked it! hope it’s useful
- adfm 2y agoSimpleMind plays well with LLMs and OPML. https://simplemind.eu/blog/mapping-your-thoughts-with-chatgpt/ https://simplemind.eu/blog/mapping-your-thoughts-with-chatgp...
- pier25 2y agoThe point of making mind maps by hand is that they help you memorize and study by synthesizing a topic. If this is done by AI it's pretty much pointless.
- InkCanon 2y agoOne of the reasons I think LLMs should not be in most parts of education. There is a huge body of research about the importance of deliberate practice. High quality learning needs effort. A lot of these tools perform the ostensible ritual of learning - note taking, mind mapping, etc - and make them frictionless, thus rendering them worthless.
- crucialfelix 2y agoExactly. If anything we should build LLM powered apps that ask questions, test understanding and create that friction necessary to build deep comprehension and memory.
- elric 2y agoAgreed. I wouldn't be opposed to a (local) LLM inside my Obsidian vault; but not for writing notes, but rather for discovering connections between notes. That's something that would actually help me. Generating mind maps like this? Not so much.
- simonbarker87 2y agoCame here to say this. Also, most mind map implementations are actually spider diagrams which (while useful) are not mind maps, the point of a mind map is the label the line and not the node.
- andai 2y agoHuh, I've been doing it wrong my whole life.
- simonbarker87 2y ago
- ainiriand 2y agoThat is really cool. I am very much into learning with the support of AI. Last month I started to learn Rust and I used this prompt to help me: 'I am an experienced software engineer who wants to learn Rust, design a learning path for 3 months, with daily goals. Try to have a good balance of learning and working exercises using available resources like Rustlings or Learn rust by example. Output this path in markdown and add space to gather my learnings in a note at the end of each week.' Maybe with some tweaks can be useful to someone else!
- aquariusDue 2y agoI'd also recommend the wonderful 100 Exercises to Learn Rust authored by Luca Palmieri who also wrote Zero To Production in Rust. I'm halfway through the exercises and I find them to complement Rustlings and The Book perfectly. So yeah, 100 Exercises to Learn Rust is what finally made traits (especially From and Into), impls and trait bounds finally click for me and I can't recommend it enough.
- ainiriand 2y agoI did that! https://github.com/sh4ka/100-exercises-to-learn-rust https://github.com/sh4ka/100-exercises-to-learn-rust
- chamomeal 2y agoHow do they compare to “the book” (I forget the exact title). I tried to get through it a couple times, but I have no background in C and the lifetimes part confused the hell outta me. Combined with all the other new things, my interest just sorta fizzled. Love those enums, though!!
- ainiriand 2y agoFor me the 100 exercises were a gentler introduction to the language for some topics, making the exercises was a bit difficult without having read the book first. But I would give it a try, I did that and then the book was much more accessible.
- brody_slade_ai 2y ago[flagged]
- simonbarker87 2y agoNice example of using AI for something but (like most “mind map” tools) the output isn’t a mind map, it’s a spider diagram. The point of a mind map is to label the line and not the node. This helps the brain form a visual and spacial connection between ideas where the lines act as bridges to the next concept/idea. Not faulting the creator here, looks like a solid implementation of AI making spider diagrams, good job. 30 years of people misusing mind maps and no one reading the Tony Buzan book have brought us to this point though where no one actually knows what mind maps are or why they are so powerful.
- 7734128 2y agoIf most people are using a term "wrong", then they are using it correctly.
- cloudhead 2y agoThank god the world doesn’t actually work this way..
- Mashimo 2y agoBut it somewhat does, no? Why else would words change meaning over time?
- lolinder 2y agoThis is exactly how the world works. Language does what language wants to, pedants try to fight it, pedants eventually lose. To boldly split an infinitive continues to be correct in spite of it being "wrong".
- royaltjames 2y agoSpecifically this is how American English works. From composition to pronunciation. It's a beautiful mess <3
- 2y ago
- sourcepluck 2y agoI wonder has the author of this project seen the discussions here on tacit knowledge (which a lot of comments here seem to almost be touching off) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29531947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29531947
- andai 2y agoWhy the heck did this get flagged? Almost all the comments are positive.
- graypegg 2y agoNeat! Though I feel like this needs to be "integrated" into something else to achieve full potential. I think a lot of people end up falling down wikipedia rabbit holes (me included!) and something where my browser can provide the same sort of "topic quicklinks" that wikipedia articles have [0] but for anywhere on the web? I'd love that! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_frequency#Electromagnetic_spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_frequency#Electromag... (deep linked to the "Electromagnetic Spectrum" topic quick links, but you might have to click the accordion control to unfold it)