AlekhniDraft 1 · p. 1

Writing is only
the first step.
Revise, Collaborate, Reflect, Think, Think more, Keep thinking

Alekhni is a rich text editor and academic workspace designed for academics and scholars (unlike most writing software, which is virtually designed for Wall Street).

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AlekhniDraft 2 · p. 2

Why did we create Alekhni?

3 comments resolved · version 2

Everything a paper needs, on one desk.

No. 01

Thanks to the “AI Crisis”. Transparency, finally.

Thanks to AI, academics and universities are finally realizing the value of transparency in academia. Let’s keep the flow going and make academic research and writing more transparent with our tools.

Fig. 1Progress page. Shows how many words you wrote each day, how long you spent writing, and what is due next.
The Progress page with weekly stats and a chart of words written over four weeks.

Fig. 1Progress page. Shows how many words you wrote each day, how long you spent writing, and what is due next.

Fig. 3Suggested edits. Teachers can suggest a change. Students decide whether to keep it or not.
The review panel listing a suggested edit, a box for overall feedback and a comment thread.

Fig. 3Suggested edits. Teachers can suggest a change. Students decide whether to keep it or not.

v1 · Mon 09:12

Social media is bad for students.

Supervisor: What do you mean by “bad”? Narrow it down.
Fig. 2Comments. Teachers leave a comment next to a sentence. Students can reply to it.
A highlighted reference in a paper with the teacher comment and the student reply beside it.

Fig. 2Comments. Teachers leave a comment next to a sentence. Students can reply to it.

Fig. 4Classes. Teachers post assignments with files and due dates, and see who has turned them in.
A class page with its join code, tabs for classwork, submissions and members, and an assignment with a rubric attached.

Fig. 4Classes. Teachers post assignments with files and due dates, and see who has turned them in.

No. 02

Let’s actually make writing fun. Process over product.

Staring at the blank white page has haunted generations of academics. Let’s actually incentivize the process of research and writing instead of the final product.

Fig. 5The editor. You write on pages that look the same as when you print them. The Check panel asks questions about your writing but does not change it.
The Alekhni editor with a student paper on a printed page and the Check panel open on its rhetoric tab.

Fig. 5The editor. You write on pages that look the same as when you print them. The Check panel asks questions about your writing but does not change it.

Fig. 7Citation styles. Pick APA, MLA, Chicago or another style, and your citations and reference list are formatted for you.
A reference list formatted in APA 7 with hanging indents and italic journal titles.

Fig. 7Citation styles. Pick APA, MLA, Chicago or another style, and your citations and reference list are formatted for you.

Writing is a set of thinking processes that a writer orchestrates while composing (Flower & Hayes, 1981).

ReferencesFlower, L., & Hayes, J. R. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition and Communication, 32(4), 365–387.
Fig. 6Zotero. Sign in with Zotero to see your sources next to your paper and cite them.
The Citations panel showing a Zotero library, the APA 7 style and sources with Cite buttons.

Fig. 6Zotero. Sign in with Zotero to see your sources next to your paper and cite them.

Fig. 8LaTeX. Write LaTeX on one side and see the page on the other. You can download it or open it in Overleaf.
LaTeX source on the left and the typeset page preview on the right.

Fig. 8LaTeX. Write LaTeX on one side and see the page on the other. You can download it or open it in Overleaf.

No. 03

We’d better stop adult supremacy now. Youth voice in academia.

Young people are conditioned to follow a level-based learning model, which restricts their growth and keeps them from engaging with complex literature, research and writing early on. Let’s empower youth voice in academia.

Fig. 9Guide for students. An optional guide for school students. It asks questions about their paper but never writes anything for them.
The Gamified Guide elephant beside an empty page, asking what topic the student wants to research and why.

Fig. 9Guide for students. An optional guide for school students. It asks questions about their paper but never writes anything for them.

Fig. 11Works offline. Works in any browser. You can keep writing without internet, and your work saves when you are back online.
The Notes page with a list of notes and a lab note with a bullet list and a checklist.

Fig. 11Works offline. Works in any browser. You can keep writing without internet, and your work saves when you are back online.

Online · synced
Fig. 10Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox. Open a file from your cloud storage, or save your paper there as a Word file or PDF.
The Cloud panel with This device, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and iCloud Drive.

Fig. 10Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox. Open a file from your cloud storage, or save your paper there as a Word file or PDF.

Fig. 12My Documents. All your papers in one place, with a small preview of each one.
My Documents in thumbnail view, showing the first lines of seven papers.

Fig. 12My Documents. All your papers in one place, with a small preview of each one.

Most user-friendly writing app in the world (pinky promise).

The student dashboard with recent documents, classes and the Gamified Guide.
DashboardsThe student desk. Recent papers, every class and the guide, one click from the page.
MemoryFlipping deck.
The Planner board with To-do, Doing, Stuck and Done columns of cards.
PlannerA board your teacher can see. To-dos and cards that teachers and collaborators can read and comment on.

A famous academic tool (we won’t name) gives teachers a [false] positive percentage to judge their students. Alekhni gives teachers and students a transparent space to collaborate and understand each other.

Graded on the final draft

“We checked the assignment your students turned in, and our non-transparent AI detector, trained on non-transparent data, will tell you how much of it is AI-generated.”

A popular AI detection tool

Guided through every draft

“Oh, don’t worry, your students are working like humans. See the versions for yourself.”

Alekhni (we “turn out” to be better at maintaining transparency and academic integrity)

A new era for human writing.

In 2024, after 25 years, the Goi Peace Foundation held the last round of its International Essay Contest for Young People. It cited “the evolution of AI technology” among its reasons.

Soon there may be no way to tell AI-generated text from a human manuscript. That is fine for paywalled news and adverts (nobody wants to read those anyway; the robots can write them for each other). It is a disaster for education and academia, where the point of writing is not production but learning. If students cannot show that they understand what they wrote, or take responsibility for their words, education becomes even more symbolic than it already is, and students lean on AI a little more every term.

Some of the blame is ours. We have graded perfection and grammar for so long that students are scared to even try. No red pen in history has ever made anyone braver. So let’s normalise mistakes, messy first drafts and sentences that start three times. Let’s make writing transparent, so everyone can see how an idea takes shape and how a perfect manuscript grows out of a terrible paragraph that once began “In today’s society…”.

Alekhni wants to be a small catalyst for that change in this new era. We cannot promise masterpieces. We can promise that every one of them will come with its version history. Even Shakespeare had a draft 1; we assume it opened with “To be, or something.”

The Alekhni team

We want to support academic reading, research and writing in every way we can: by building the best software made for academic work, and by making research accessible to everyone, especially young people.

  • Academic-first software

    Built around theses, essays and supervision, not quarterly reports.

  • Research within reach

    Runs in any browser, on any device, even offline.

  • Young researchers first

    Tools for all students and a transparent journal, inculcating good habits early.

Our dialogic journal

Our non-profit journal takes a new approach to submissions. Every author receives feedback, and students are judged on how they developed their idea, not only on the final draft.

  • Every author receives written feedback
  • Progress and process count, not only the final draft
  • Run as a non-profit, for students
Visit alekhni.org
  • APA 7
  • MLA 9
  • Chicago 18
  • Harvard
  • IEEE
  • Vancouver
  • OSCOLA
  • Nature
  • Zotero
  • Google Drive
  • OneDrive
  • Dropbox
  • DOCX
  • PDF
  • LaTeX
  • Markdown

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