Search that finds the source, mindmaps and study guides, and SeferAI on Apple Watch
Three things changed this week. The first one matters to everyone who uses SeferAI.
Search now finds the sources it should
Ask SeferAI "Tell me about Ushpizin" and, until this week, the answer was built on the wrong texts. The search returned one-line fragments of commentary, and the passage in the Zohar where the custom of welcoming the seven guests comes from never appeared at all. The answer read well, which is what made it dangerous: it argued from sources that were not about the question.
We stopped judging search by how answers read and started measuring it. We took 200 questions from Sefaria's own topic pages ("Tell me about Hospitality", "Tell me about the Red Heifer"), each with the sources Sefaria's editors list for that topic, and counted how often at least one of those sources was among the 25 passages an answer is built from. Before this week: 14 of 200.
Search now reads the words of your question first, the way you would use a concordance, and only then looks for passages that are close in meaning. A Hebrew question finds the vocalised Hebrew text. Naming a book, "Zohar Emor", finds that book. On the same 200 questions: 68 of 200, nearly five times as often. For Ushpizin, the first source is now the section of Rabbi Eliezer Melamed's Peninei Halakhah on welcoming the guests, which Sefaria itself lists for the topic.
It is not finished. The hardest questions are asked in English about ideas whose sources exist only in Hebrew or Aramaic. That is what we are working on next, measured the same way.
Mindmaps and study guides (Ultra-Premium)
Open any answer in your library and you will now find two more study tools next to Flashcards and Quiz.
Mindmap lays out the main ideas of the answer as a tree you can fold and unfold, each point linked to the source it rests on in Sefaria.
Study guide gives you an overview, the key sources and what each one contributes, the Hebrew and Aramaic terms you will meet, where the views differ, questions for a chavruta or a class, and five review questions with their answers kept out of sight until you want them.
Like flashcards and quizzes, both are drawn only from your answer, never invent a citation, and print: the study guide puts its answers on the last page. They are on the web and, since version 1.4, in the iPhone app.
SeferAI on Apple Watch
SeferAI is on Apple Watch, with version 1.4 of the iPhone app. Your newest episodes are there; tap one to download it to the Watch and listen without your phone. Nothing to sign in to on the Watch: your iPhone passes it your private feed. You can also follow your feed in Apple Podcasts, which downloads new episodes to the Watch while it charges.
Reset your private links
Your private podcast feed and your personal Claude connector link work like keys: anyone who has the link can use it. If you have shared one somewhere by mistake, you can now reset it. Choose Reset link next to the feed on My Podcast Episodes, or under Use in Claude. The old link stops working at once, and you paste the new one wherever you used the old. On the web, and in the iPhone app since version 1.4.