Influences & Credits
Almost nothing here is original to us. The way this site teaches — recall cards woven into the prose, interactive explanations, the idea that your understanding should compound over time — comes from a handful of people who thought hard about how minds and tools work together. This page names them.
Our pledge. We implement their mechanisms in our own words and our own code. We don't copy their writing, their notes, or their designs pixel-for-pixel, and we don't claim their work as ours.
Wherever we use one of these ideas, you'll find a small "↳ Influences & credits" note linking back here — and from here, straight to the source. Honestly: the originals are better than anything we'll write. Go read them.
Douglas Engelbart
The whole premise · used: everywhere
The phrase "augmented intelligence" exists because of Engelbart's 1962 framing of augmenting human intellect: tools should raise human capability, not replace the human. It's the bet this whole site makes — that AI is simply one of those tools. See whether it holds up as you read on.
Andy Matuschak
Mnemonic medium · evergreen notes · prompt-writing · used: the recall cards, the review queue, our notes practice
Our recall cards — prose interrupted by quick "did this stick?" prompts, scheduled to return just before you'd forget — are our take on the mnemonic medium he pioneered (with Michael Nielsen). The way we think about writing those prompts (one idea, precise, answerable, effortful) follows his prompt-writing guidance. His "Why books don't work" is why we don't just hand you paragraphs and hope. His evergreen notes practice (atomic, concept-oriented, densely linked) guides how we structure ideas.
andymatuschak.org ↗ Why books don't work ↗ How to write good prompts ↗ Evergreen notes ↗
Michael Nielsen
Tools for thought · explanation · networked discovery · used: recall cards, Explorables, community
With Matuschak, Nielsen built Quantum Country and wrote "How can we develop transformative tools for thought?" — the clearest argument we know for designing media that change how you think rather than just what you read. His "Augmenting Long-term Memory" shaped how we treat spaced repetition as a serious tool, not a gimmick. Two of his "Reinventing" pieces sit under the rest of this site: Reinventing Explanation — the case that interactive, visual media can explain what prose can't — is the thinking behind our Explorables; and Reinventing Discovery, his book on networked science, is why we treat community as part of the augmentation, not a nice-to-have. Tools amplify one mind; networks amplify many.
Quantum Country ↗ Transformative tools for thought ↗ Augmenting Long-term Memory ↗ Reinventing Explanation ↗ Reinventing Discovery ↗
Bret Victor
Explorable explanations · "show the data" · used: our interactive widgets
Our interactive pieces — like the explorable on Why it's worth your time where ticking off jobs adds up the hours you'd hand back — follow Victor's principle that people understand what they can see and manipulate. "Show the data; make state visible; give immediate feedback." When we add interactivity, it's to earn understanding, never decoration.
worrydream.com ↗ Learnable Programming ↗ Explorable Explanations ↗
Judy Fan
Cognitive tools · make the invisible visible · the science↔engineering loop · used: the whole discover → explore → build shape
Fan, a cognitive scientist, studies cognitive tools — the human-made artifacts (number lines, diagrams, graphs) that make the invisible visible and let each generation build on the last. Her bigger argument is a loop worth borrowing: we discover useful abstractions about the world, then engineer with them to build new things — and what we build makes something new visible to discover. That loop is the spine of how this site is shaped: discover, explore, build, and round again.
"Making the Invisible Visible" (talk) ↗ Cognitive Tools Lab ↗
The explorable-explanations lineage
The craft itself · used: Discover & Explore, the whole hands-on approach
Victor named the idea; a handful of people turned it into a craft, and we learned from all of them. Nicky Case built more explorables than anyone and even wrote the patterns down ("Puzzle It Out", "Place Your Bets", "Role Play", "Sandbox Mode") alongside a "How I Make Explorable Explanations" guide — the field's de-facto theorist. Amit Patel's Red Blob Games is the most continuously maintained, with public "making-of" notes. Dan Shiffman (The Nature of Code) teaches the same hands-on spirit in code; Jack Schaedler's "Circles, Sines and Signals" is a genre exemplar; Vi Hart's playful maths and William Ngan's Pts.js round it out. It's only honest to add that the field is small and its output intermittent — Case has written candidly about burnout — which is part of why we're trying to make the craft easier to keep doing.
Nicky Case ↗ Red Blob Games ↗ The Nature of Code ↗ Circles, Sines and Signals ↗ Pts.js ↗
Ted Nelson
Hypertext & transclusion · used: the "never lose context" navigation we're building
Nelson imagined documents where following a link never makes you lose your place — ideas shown side by side, in context. That lineage informs the connected, context-keeping navigation we're adding to our notes and lessons.
The science of learning
Retrieval practice · cognitive load · used: why recall cards work, why pages stay calm
Recall cards rest on the retrieval-practice (testing) effect — recalling something strengthens it more than re-reading — established over decades by researchers including Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke. We keep pages uncluttered and reveal detail gradually because of John Sweller's cognitive load theory. We cite the effects, not invented numbers.
Standing on shoulders
If any of this resonates, please support the people above directly — read their work, follow them, back their projects. We're just trying to put their ideas to work for everyday learners. Spotted something we should credit and haven't? Tell us and we'll fix it.