Knowable

Knowable is an AI tutoring application for Mac that sees your physical notebook through your camera and provides real time coaching as you work. The AI tutor is named Milo. You point your camera at a textbook, notebook, or problem set, press a keyboard shortcut, and Milo looks at what you have written. Instead of giving you the answer, it asks guiding questions designed to push you toward figuring it out yourself. That pedagogical approach mimics what a good human tutor does. The difference is that Milo costs a fraction of hourly tutoring rates and is available at midnight before an exam when human tutors are not. The vision is that every student should have access to patient, contextual help regardless of whether their family can afford private tutoring.

The visual understanding covers more than printed text. Milo reads handwritten equations, interprets diagrams, parses prose, and handles subjects across the high school curriculum. Math subjects including algebra, calculus, geometry, and trigonometry. Sciences including physics, chemistry, and biology. English including essay analysis and composition. History, geography, and foreign languages. If you are stuck on a calculus problem and your scratch work is visible on the page, the tutor sees that context. It responds to where you actually are in the problem rather than asking you to explain from scratch. That contextual awareness is what separates Knowable from typing a question into a chatbot. The tutor can see your partial progress and tailor its hints accordingly.

Responses render LaTeX for mathematical notation so equations display correctly rather than as awkward ASCII approximations. Text to speech reads responses aloud if you prefer to listen while you write. The combination means you can keep your eyes on your notebook and your pencil moving while Milo talks you through the next step. That flow is closer to working with a human tutor than switching between typing and reading on a screen.

Setup requires a Mac running Ventura or later. The built in camera works, but you can also connect an iPhone via Continuity Camera if you want a better angle looking down at your desk. That flexibility is useful because the built in webcam on most Macs points straight ahead rather than down at your desk. No additional hardware is required beyond what you likely already own. The demo runs in Safari without downloading anything, so you can try it before committing to the app.

The interaction model supports voice or text input, whichever fits your workflow. You ask a question by pressing option plus M, speaking or typing, and Milo responds with hints rather than answers. The conversation continues as you make progress through your homework or study session. You can go back and forth multiple times on a single problem, and Milo will remember the context of your earlier attempts and adjust its guidance accordingly.

Privacy is handled carefully. Camera frames exist only in memory during a session. They are not written to disk or stored in a database. The raw video feed never leaves your device. Messages and metadata are encrypted and stored on AWS DynamoDB, but AWS contractually guarantees that user data is not used for model training. For families concerned about student data, this architecture means the visual information stays local and the conversation history is encrypted at rest. The company publishes these details on their site rather than hiding them in a privacy policy nobody reads.

An educator portal lets teachers create classes and share invite codes with students. Once students join, teachers see aggregated struggle point analytics showing which concepts caused the most difficulty. That visibility helps teachers identify where to spend more time in class without manually grading a stack of papers. Teachers can also configure parent sharing levels, from off to stats only to full activity logs, depending on what fits their classroom and privacy requirements. The educator features are accessed at a separate portal URL rather than inside the student facing app.

Pricing is freemium. A free tier gives you 1,000 credits per month with no credit card required. Knowable Plus costs $24.99 per month or $249.99 per year and includes 10,000 credits per month. The annual plan saves about seventeen percent compared to monthly billing. One time credit packs are available at $4.99 for 500 credits or $24.99 for 3,000 credits if you need a burst of tutoring before an exam without committing to a subscription. For the cost of one or two human tutoring sessions, you get a month of on demand help that actually sees your work and guides you through it rather than simply telling you the answer.