How to use alcoia

What happens on its own

Alcoia notices when you slow down or re-read a sentence. It does this by watching your reading pace against the text difficulty and your own baseline speed. When it detects a slowdown, it asks a short retrieval question about that exact sentence.

The interruption card

The card appears in the margin with a question and three choices. Below the question is a quote from the text. The label above tells you why it interrupted: "You slowed down here" or "You re-read that passage."

The confidence question

Some questions include a second part. After you answer, it sometimes asks "Are you sure?" This is not doubt. It is checking whether you knew the answer or just guessed. Answering wrong and confident is where learning fails. This check helps you catch it.

Why it is sometimes silent

If you are reading steadily at a pace that matches the text difficulty, alcoia stays quiet. It only interrupts when your pace suggests something did not land. It also limits itself to one question every three minutes, and never asks about the same paragraph twice in one session.

What you can trigger yourself

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	What it does
Alt+S	Summarize the paragraph you are looking at
Alt+T	Read aloud (text-to-speech)
Alt+F	Show the reading guide (focus ruler)
Alt+I	Create a reading receipt
Alt+R	Open session recall
Alt+N	Open your notes
Alt+G	Open session report (how much you read, where you struggled)
Alt+M	Open reading map
Esc	Dismiss a card or popup

Without a keyboard

All of these are also available as buttons. Look in the alcoia popup menu for Page summary, Quiz, Recall, Receipt, Notes, Highlights, Session report, Export, and Diagnostics.

Text selection

Select text normally to highlight it. Hold Ctrl while dragging to highlight instead of selecting. Ctrl+hover a word to look it up (uses an assist).

How to make it quieter

Master switch

The toggle "Notice when I'm struggling" turns alcoia's interruptions on and off. When it is off, alcoia will not ask questions, but all other features (reading guide, highlights, notes) still work.

Snooze

Click the snooze button on a card to dismiss it and not be interrupted for the next five minutes on this page.

Cards persist or clear

By default, cards stay visible after you answer. You can change this in settings to have them disappear automatically. Find the toggle "Keep cards after I answer."

How it looks

Reading guide

Toggle "Show the reading guide" or press Alt+F. It draws a line under the line you are reading to help your eye track across the page.

Dark mode

Toggle "Dark mode" to switch the alcoia interface to a dark background. This does not change the page itself, only alcoia's popups and cards.

Dyslexia mode

Toggle "Dyslexia mode" to apply a tinted overlay to text. You can choose the tint colour. Yellow, blue, green, and pink are available. This helps some readers reduce visual stress. The setting persists across pages.

Highlight colour

Choose your highlight colour in settings. Highlights you create will use this colour.

Save explanations with highlights

Toggle "Save an explanation with each highlight." When this is on, alcoia saves the explanation text alongside your highlight (uses an assist). When off, only the highlighted text is saved.

Your pages

Notes

Open via Alt+N or the Notes button. This is a blank page where you can type your own notes about the document. They are stored on your device.

Quiz

Open via the Quiz button. Shows every question alcoia asked you on this page and your answer. Quizzes are stored on your device only. They cannot be retaken. A quiz unlocks only after you have read enough of the document.

Highlights

Open via the Highlights button. Shows every passage you highlighted and (if you enabled it) the explanation alcoia saved with it. Delete individual highlights by clicking the trash icon next to each one.

Session report

Open via Alt+G or the Session report button. Shows how much of the page you read, your reading pace, how many times you slowed down, and a breakdown of your reading state (on pace, struggling, away from the tab). Use this to understand where you spent your time.

Export

Open via the Export button. Download your notes, highlights, quiz, and session report as a JSON file that you can save or share.

Diagnostics

Open via the Diagnostics button. Shows technical information about alcoia's state. This is for troubleshooting. Most readers will never need it.

Deleting your data

All data is stored on your device. Uninstalling alcoia deletes everything. To clear data from a single page, use the trash icons in each page (Notes, Highlights, etc.). To clear all data at once, use "Clear all data" in the alcoia settings.

PDFs and slides

Local PDF and PPTX files open in alcoia's viewer so alcoia can see them. If you prefer the browser's viewer instead, toggle "Use browser viewer for PDFs and slides."

Retrieval questions do not currently work on PDFs or slides. You can use manual summaries ("Summarize this paragraph") and highlights, but you will not get automatic interruptions or quizzes.

PDFs opened from a website (not from your device) are not covered by alcoia and open in the browser viewer.

What alcoia cannot do

• Retake a quiz. Once you answer a question, that is your record on it.
• Sync across devices. Your notes, highlights, and quiz results stay on the device where you created them.
• Remember data across documents. Each page's data is separate.
• Generate a concept map or other visualization of what you read.
• Ask retrieval questions on PDFs or slides (manual summarising works, automatic interruptions do not).
• Extract text from images or scanned PDFs.