Looking for Feedback for my Experimental e-ink reader with smart session recalls

[ozone4real]

Hello everyone,

I’m a long-time e-reader user who recently decided to try building the reading application I personally wanted, after running into the same frustration repeatedly with existing readers.

My main issue was continuity. I’d read a book, put it down for a few days, and when I came back I often had no clear memory of where I was or why certain plot points or characters mattered. This was especially noticeable in longer or denser fiction. Looking things up externally (e.g. character names) frequently led to spoilers.

I’m a software engineer by day, and eventually I decided to prototype an e-ink-first reader that focuses on helping you resume reading, rather than analyzing text in a general way.

The core ideas are simple:

When reopening a book, the app can show a short “Previously on…” style recap based only on what you’ve already read.

A spoiler-safe character lookup that only describes a character using information from passages you’ve already seen

An “explain” action for dense prose or metaphors (useful to me as a non-native English speaker)

Designed to work within normal reading flow with no chat UI, no constant prompts and no gimmicks.

I chose Boox devices specifically because they run Android and allow deeper customization than more locked-down platforms. I’m currently using a Go Color Gen 2.

This is a very early alpha build. The app is functional but rough, and things may break. I’m not trying to sell anything at this stage and I’m mainly looking for thoughtful feedback from people who care about reading experience and e-ink usability.

If anyone here is interested in trying the prototype, or discussing whether this approach makes sense at all, or pointing out design pitfalls I may be missing I’d genuinely appreciate the input.

I’ve set up a Discord to coordinate alpha access and discussion, simply because it’s easier to manage feedback there:

https://discord.gg/KWNcr8mSzq

Thanks for reading, and happy to answer questions here as well.

— Sam