HOW IO WORKS

A field guide to reading deeply.

Everything the reader does — the reading modes, the sparring partners, the library, import, and the share card — in five minutes. This is the instrument, end to end.

READING MODES

One paragraph at a time. Or one sentence.

Card and reel modes strip the page to a single unit of thought. In card mode the book advances sentence by sentence; in reel mode, paragraph by paragraph. No progress bar nagging at the corner of your eye, no wall of text to skim — just the line in front of you, for as long as it deserves.

The action row sits under every unit: like, note, share, and ask the AI. You read deliberately, and the controls wait until you reach for them.

TIP · SET THE PACE

Swipe forward only when the sentence has landed. The mode is built to be slow on purpose — rereading a line is a feature, not a detour.

IO card mode in sepia theme — a single Marcus Aurelius sentence, 'Confine thyself to the present,' with progress dots and a like / note / share / AI action row.

Card mode — sentence by sentence, in the sepia reading theme.

THE SPARRING PARTNERS

An AI that asks more of you.

It won't summarize the book. Each persona is built to leave you sharper than the page found you — to argue, to connect, to carry meaning across a language without flattening it. You select a passage, choose a partner, and the response is about the exact lines in front of you.

The Critical Thinker: Argues with the passage. Pressure-tests the claim and finds the condition everyone skips.
The Interpreter: Builds the bridge to what you already know. Strips the costume off the line.
The Translator: Carries meaning across languages — and shows you where the music lives in the original.
The Historian: Sets the passage back in its own century. Shows you the world it was answering.
The Philosopher: Finds the question under the question — and names the tradition the line is arguing with.
The Psychologist: Reads the motive beneath the words. Maps what the characters can't say out loud.
The Rhetorician: Takes the sentence apart — the word choice, the rhythm, the device that makes it land.
The Questioner: Never answers — only asks. Escalates the questions until your assumption cracks.
The Vocab Coach: Pulls the words worth keeping, defines them in context, and hands you a way to remember.
The Quiz Master: Turns the page into questions — recall, inference, and the open-ended kind that linger.
The Note-Taker: Distills the passage into a study note: the key idea, the detail, the quote, and why it matters.
The Futurist: Carries the idea forward — connects the line to where it lands today, and where it's heading.

TIP · SAVE THE EXCHANGE

Any response can be saved to your notes on that book, so the argument stays attached to the passage that started it.

Close-up of the Critical Thinker response on Machiavelli — 'Everyone quotes the maxim; almost no one quotes the condition...' — set in large serif on dark.

The Critical Thinker, on a line from Machiavelli's The Prince.

Full phone, dark theme — the Interpreter persona answering on Hamlet's soliloquy, with the persona tab row.

The Interpreter, on Hamlet's soliloquy.

THE LIBRARY

Five centuries of the canon, typeset for your pocket.

Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks, presented like a magazine. Home keeps your streak, your place, and a continue-reading card; Discover runs themed issues with editorial pull-quotes; Library is your own shelf, cover-forward. A For You feed learns how you read, not just what.

Austen to Aurelius, Eliot to Melville — included with IO from the first open.

TIP · THE FEED LEARNS

The more deliberately you read, the better Discover gets. It weighs how long you sit with a passage, not just the taps.

IO Home tab, light theme — greeting, a reading-streak card, a Middlemarch continue-reading card, and a Mystery & Detection shelf.

IO Discover tab, light theme — a 'Mind & Madness' themed issue, a carousel of book covers, and a Veblen editorial pull-quote.

Home and Discover — the personalized feed and the magazine-style canon.

IMPORT & SYNC

Bring your own books. Keep your place everywhere.

The canon is the start, not the boundary. Bring in your own EPUBs and web articles, and read them in the same modes with the same sparring partners. Your place, highlights, and library follow you across every device — and nothing locks you in.

EPUB & web-article import: Drop in your own files and clip articles to read deliberately.
Cross-device sync: Your place, highlights, and notes on every device, always current.
On-device translation: Powered by Apple Foundation Models — meaning stays on your phone.
DRM-free, no lock-in: Your books are yours. Leave whenever you like, library intact.

IO Library tab, light theme — a search field, list and grid toggles, filter chips, and a two-column cover grid of Middlemarch, Moby-Dick, Crime and Punishment, and Jane Eyre.

Your shelf — the canon and your own imports, side by side.

MAKE IT YOURS

A reader profile, and a line worth keeping.

Tune the reading surface to the way you read — pace, theme, and a profile that shapes what the personas and the feed offer back. And when a sentence stops you, export it as a typeset quote card: the line, the attribution, set in the same New York serif as the page it came from.

It is the one thing in IO designed to leave the app — a keepsake, not a marketing badge.

TIP · THE SHARE CARD

Long-press any saved passage to generate the card. Every export carries the book and the author — the attribution travels with the line.

A landscape share card on cream — a serif Marcus Aurelius quote, 'Look within. Within is the fountain of good,' with attribution to Meditations.

The exported quote card — typeset to match the reading view.

NOW AVAILABLE

Depth is becoming rare. Keep yours.

IO is now on the App Store. Download it on your iPhone and start reading deeper today.