Kenna 1.0A reader for iPhone

Ask about any line. The answer stays in the margin.

Save articles, PDFs and pasted text. Select a passage to have it explained, ask a question, or highlight it. Every answer is kept beside the paragraph it came from.

Download on theApp Store See how it works ↓

9:415G ▮

‹ LibraryWalden · ch. 3

¶3

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers.

¶4

It requires a training such as the athletes underwent. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Explain · ¶4Read with the care that went into the writing. Thoreau compares reading to athletic training: slow, effortful, repeated. He returns to the idea in ¶5.

¶5

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times.

¶6

We must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits.

§01

How it reads

01 · Ask

Ask about any line.

Type a question while you read. The answer appears under the paragraph, with ¶ references back to the text so you can check it.

02 · Select

Select a passage. Explain, ask or highlight.

One toolbar for everything you do with a sentence. Three highlighter colours, and a pen for notes of your own.

03 · Library

Articles, PDFs and pasted text in one library.

Each text is a spine, sized by how long it takes to read. Kenna sorts them into topics, and a ribbon marks where you left off.

04 · Notebook

Every highlight and answer in one notebook.

Highlights, explanations and your own notes collect by text. Tap any of them to jump back to the paragraph.

9:415G ▮

‹ LibraryEssay · 12 min

¶1

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Most of what we read is skimmed, sorted and set aside.

Who said the line about generosity?

Answer · ¶1Simone Weil, in a 1942 letter. The essay borrows it without quotation marks in ¶1 and names her in ¶7.

¶2

To read slowly is to let a sentence finish its work on you before the next one starts.

Ask about this essay↑

‹ LibraryEssay · 12 min

¶1

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Most of what we read is skimmed, sorted and set aside.

ExplainAskCopy

¶2

To read slowly is to let a sentence finish its work on you before the next one starts. The page does not hurry, and neither should the reader.

¶3

A margin was once the place for this: a note, a question, a line drawn under the phrase that mattered.

Kenna 1.0 ∵ Library

Your library

11 texts · 5 topics · 3.3 h of reading

Philosophy

Walden38 MIN

Meditations, book II18 MIN

On Shortness of Life✓ 9 MIN

Attention

On Attention12 MIN

Design notes.pdf24 MIN

Cities3 texts · 1.0 h · 1 reading

⌄

Notebook24 notes

Notebook

Walden

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.Read with the care that went into the writing.Explain · ¶4

On Attention

To read slowly is to let a sentence finish its work on you.Highlight · ¶2

Walden

Pair with Schopenhauer: reading as thinking with someone else’s head.Note · ¶9

§02Privacy

Your library stays on this device. AI is optional.

On device

No account, no cloud library.

Texts, highlights and notes are stored on your iPhone.

Only what you ask about

You can see what gets sent.

The selected words, the paragraphs around them, and your question go to the provider you chose. Nothing else from your library.

AI off

A good reader without it.

Pick “None” as your provider and Kenna is a place to read and highlight.

§03Bring your own AI

Use your own key, or a model on your computer.

Connect a provider you already pay for. Keys are stored in the iOS keychain. Or point Kenna at Ollama or LM Studio running on your computer, reached over Wi-Fi.

Together AI
OpenRouter
OpenAI
Anthropic
Groq
Google
Ollama
LM Studio

Usage · this week

Anthropic14 calls · Oct 15

38.2k in / 4.1k out≈$0.18

Groq6 calls · Oct 15

9.8k in / 0.4k out≈$0.01

Anthropic22 calls · Oct 14

61.0k in / 6.9k out≈$0.29

Ollama9 calls · Oct 13

12.4k in / 2.2k out$0.00

Anthropic5 calls · Oct 12

14.7k in / 1.3k out≈$0.06

Estimates from your provider’s published rates

§04

Pricing

KennaFree

The reader, library, highlights and notebook. No subscription.

Download on the App Store

AI answersYour provider’s rates

You pay the provider directly. Kenna shows an estimate for each day. Local models cost nothing per answer.

14 answers on Anthropic ≈ $0.18

§05

Questions

Web articles, PDFs and any text you paste. Share a link or file to Kenna from Safari, Files or another app and it lands in your library.