Sophia and a chat assistant

Sophia is an iPhone app. You tell it a subject you want to learn, or give it a paper, an article or a video, and it writes you a course of short lessons. This page explains when a chat assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude is enough, how to use Sophia and a chat assistant together, and what Sophia costs.

When a chat assistant is enough

A chat assistant is often enough in these cases:

• You have a specific question, and you know the subject well enough to check the answer.
• You want one short article or document summarised or explained.
• You learn by doing, for example by writing code, working through problem sets or practising a language. Sophia teaches ideas in short lessons. It does not set exercises or grade your work, although you can ask it to quiz you on a lesson.
• You do not use an iPhone. Sophia is coming to iOS first.

What a Sophia course includes

A Sophia course is a series of short lessons on one subject, planned before any lesson is written. You read it over as many sessions as you need. The blog post You never ask about what you’ve never heard of explains why a subject you have meant to learn for a while needs a plan.

• Sophia plans the outline of the course before it writes the first lesson, and the outline starts with the basics. You can read the outline before Sophia writes the lessons.
• You can give Sophia your own sources: a paper, an article, a PDF, an image or a YouTube video, or several of these at once. Sophia reads each source in full. If you give it only a topic, it searches the web.
• Sophia fact-checks each lesson. It can still make mistakes, so check anything you plan to act on. The FAQ has more about accuracy.
• Lessons include diagrams, timelines, charts and tables where these explain an idea better than text. They are sized for a phone screen.
• Sophia writes a course in the background, usually in a few minutes. You can close the app while it works, and you can start several courses at once. You can start reading as soon as the first lesson is ready.
• On paid plans, Sophia can read each lesson aloud. Each lesson has its own spoken script, which describes the charts and reads maths aloud. If you switch between reading and listening, you continue from the same place. You can listen at up to twice the normal speed.
• Sophia saves your progress in each course to your account. When you return to a course, Sophia shows a short summary of what you have learned so far.
• You can ask Sophia for a few lessons each day, at times you choose, with a reminder. Finished courses stay in your library, and you can search the library by title.
• While you read a lesson, you can ask Sophia questions about it. Sophia answers from that lesson and the course outline, and it can search the web and cite its sources. Asking questions spends no credits.
• You can also start a course by email. Send a link or a file to Sophia’s email address, which is on the Integrations page.

Sophia is built by a small team. The changelog lists all 15 releases so far.

Using both

You can connect Sophia to a chat assistant through MCP, a standard way for assistants to use other apps. Your assistant can then make a Sophia course from the conversation you are having.

• If a subject comes up in a conversation and you want to learn it in depth, ask your assistant to make a Sophia course about it. The assistant passes on what you discussed, including anything it corrected you on.
• The assistant can check which topics you have already covered in Sophia. The course then leaves those out and covers what you do not know yet.
• The assistant shows you the planned outline and can change it as you talk. Sophia writes the lessons only after you tell the assistant to go ahead.
• This works with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Windsurf and other assistants that support MCP. The Integrations page explains how to connect each one.

What it costs

These are US prices at launch. The App Store shows and charges each price in your local currency, including local tax.

• A 20-lesson course without long videos or large files uses 215 credits: 15 credits for the outline and 10 credits for each lesson. Long videos and large files use more credits.
• The length of a course depends on the subject and on how deep you want it to go. You can ask Sophia to show you the outline and the exact number of credits before it writes the course.
• Narration uses 5 credits per lesson and needs a paid plan.
• Asking questions in a lesson spends no credits. Explore is a catalogue of courses Sophia has already written. Saving one of those courses spends no credits but needs a paid plan.
• Subscription credits you do not use in a month carry over to the next month, and expire at the end of it. Each paid plan also has a $4.99 top-up, which you can buy while that plan is active. Top-up credits never expire.

The FAQ has more detail on plans and top-ups and on how credits are calculated.