Show HN: A beautiful and local-first PDF reader for studying dense things

A developer built Quincy, a local-first PDF reader for Mac that includes AI features for studying dense texts, after struggling to focus while reading "C++ Primer." The tool allows users to chat with pages, generate quizzes, receive summaries, and have text read aloud, with all AI processing running locally using the user's own API keys.

Recently, I found myself having to read the book "C++ primer" and I just couldn't do it. Maybe my attention span is too little now with Claude and Codex, maybe I'm lazy... but I just couldn't get myself to focus. While reading, I needed something to do. I wanted to talk to the text, I wanted to leave notes, I wanted to use to use my keyboard to quickly flip through pages. The only good available option on a Mac was "Preview" and it was ok, but definitely not there. So I built Quincy primarily for myself. With it you can - "Talk" to the page you're reading, create a quiz about the page, and get a good summary - "Read" the page out-loud. Have your Mac read to you while you follow along. This helps with comprehension. - Copy text to paste into an LLM , leave notes, bookmarks, etc.... - Anything else you'd want with a nice PDF reader It's fully local. No cloud-sync yet . All LLM calls are based on your keys. And TBH, you don't even need to use the AI features for this to be useful. Try it out. Let me know what you guys think. This has been a quick project, so very rough around the edges. I plan on keeping it going still haven't finished my book , and potentially open-sourcing down the line. Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48429735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48429735 Points: 2 Comments: 0