I finally found an AI tool that helps me think instead of thinking for me

Much of the controversy surrounding artificial intelligence lies with its ability to do all the thinking for the user, rather than pushing them to think for themselves or assisting them with things they might otherwise miss. It's a fair criticism; a lot of AI tools do have a tendency to take the reins, so to speak (although that can be avoided by prompting them correctly, but I digress). I set out in search of a tool that genuinely helped the user learn things, rather than just giving them the answer, and I discovered Heptabase.

Heptabase is a virtual whiteboard, described by the developer as a "visual personal knowledge management platform." If you've used Obsidian before, think of it like the Canvas feature, but on AI-powered steroids. You can take notes, journal, and annotate PDFs, then connect all of those ideas together on the whiteboard itself. The endlessly scrolling whiteboards are impressive, but remain easy to navigate thanks to clever search features.

Heptabase's AI starts with what I know

The AI tutor actually, you know, tutors you

I used the same test in all the apps I tested: world-building a setting in a fantasy novel. I provided Heptabase with what I already knew about the setting and told it I wanted to expand it further in a more natural way. I asked it to prompt me based on what I already had, and to ask questions to help me narrow down answers on aspects of the setting that I hadn't decided on.

The AI Tutor is a secondary function of the whiteboard feature. I used Heptabase by creating a whiteboard and adding all the information I currently had, then feeding it into the AI Tutor to generate a "lesson plan" of sorts. I was skeptical at first; how useful could a lesson plan be for writing fiction? The end result surprised me. Heptabase created a syllabus that told me exactly what it covered and then broke the remaining sections down into bite-sized chunks that I could develop piecemeal.

It asks questions rather than filling in the blanks

Heptabase helps me find gaps without writing over them

One of the details I included was that the world of the story was roughly the diameter of Mercury, and it posed a series of questions to help me figure out the physics of the world, such as what the gravity was like or how long each day was. It went on to drill down further into those questions, such as what effect the gravity might have on movement, flight, and even the appearance of people on the planet. Had I used a different tool, such as Claude, it probably would have told me exactly what the gravity was and how it impacted day-to-day life. Heptabase left the decision-making down to me, but helped me identify areas I had previously overlooked.

From a writing standpoint, these questions are far more useful than generated lore. Any old chatbot can come up with a setting in just a few seconds, but by providing questions for me to think through and answer on my own, Heptabase helps me create a much more unique, living world. More than that, by answering the questions, it helps me remember these details (and lets my subconscious do a lot of work in the background for later).

The applications go far beyond just writing a book, though. Heptabase is tremendously useful for generating study guides for courses. It's an excellent tool for students, but also for anyone interested in learning about a topic.

The whiteboard itself is equally useful

It records answers for later review

While Heptabase's AI steals the show, the whiteboard itself is tremendously powerful. Let's look at the example from before. I can have a card with the surface-level details of the planet, and then an offshoot card that looks at gravity, with cards coming off that examine how it impacts appearance, flight, combat, and more. To use a non-writing-related example, if the card were about Mercury itself, I could have a child card that looks at its geography, and then other cards branching from that detailing tectonic activity, planet age, and much more.

In a normal conversation with a chatbot, useful answers tend to get buried under a large thread of responses. Heptabase makes it easy to add a response to the whiteboard so that it can be found later. I don't lose the details in an avalanche of information.

But it's not cheap

Heptabase's subscription seems a bit higher for what it is

Heptabase isn't free. Its AI features require credits, and even the lowest subscription is still $9 per month when paid annually, or $12 if paid monthly. And the sad fact is, it's basically useless. You only get 100 credits per month at that tier. If you want to utilize the AI features in any real way, you'll burn those credits in just a few hours. It does give access to the whiteboard, and you can manually input anything you want. That said, without the AI features, it's nothing special; you'd essentially be paying for a less-customizable version of Obsidian.

The next tier is the Premium tier at $18 per month, and that's just too much to pay for AI credits when you can go through a service like OpenRouter and find much more cost-effective options.

Heptabase is interesting, but I don't know if I'll stick with it long-term

I really like Heptabase, and I think it could be a useful tool. It's not a cost-effective way. I can achieve the same results by using a chatbot, but it does involve jumping through more hoops. Heptabase simplifies the experience and puts it into a sleek interface, but I just don't know if that's enough to justify the monthly cost.