The Crux

Paste any talk or long read — get the signal without the noise

Paste any talk or long read — a TED talk, lecture, keynote, sermon, podcast, or article — and get the 20% that matters. Four modes: Distill, Study Guide, Test Prep and Connect.

Overview

The Crux solves a problem every long talk or article has: an hour of content where maybe ten minutes truly matters. Speakers and writers repeat the important points, flag them with emphasis, and bury them in tangents, stories, and setup. The Crux detects those signals and extracts what you'd highlight if you had perfect attention the whole way through — whether it's a TED talk, a university lecture, a conference keynote, a sermon, a podcast, or a long read. Four modes cover different needs, from quick-reference bullets to full practice exams.

How to use it

  1. Pick a mode: Distill (bullet points), Study Guide (structured review), Test Prep (practice questions), or Connect (cross-source themes)
  2. Paste your content — a talk or podcast transcript, a YouTube caption dump, lecture notes, or the text of a long article
  3. Optionally add the subject and topic for sharper context
  4. Set mode-specific options: bullet count, priority type, exam format, question types, difficulty
  5. Review results — each mode produces output optimized for its use case

Example

Scenario: You just watched a 20-minute TED talk on behavioral economics and want the core ideas without rewatching it.

What you do: Paste the transcript, enter 'Behavioral economics' as the subject, and run Distill (8 bullets, balanced priority) for the key ideas.

Result: Distill produces 8 ranked points — #1 is the talk's central claim (tagged 'framework, memorable'), flagging the line the speaker repeated three times and the story used to anchor it. Each point notes how to remember it, and the summary strips the anecdotes down to the idea they were illustrating. Run Connect across several saved transcripts and it surfaces the threads that span them.

Tips