Press ⌘⇧Space and circle anything — a problem set, a stubborn bug, a dense paragraph. Margin is the tutor that comes to your work: a hint drawn right on your screen, never just the answer.
macOS 14+ · Now piloting with select students and classrooms
Every other AI learning tool makes you bring the problem to it. Margin teaches inside the work itself.
ChatGPT, Khanmigo, and study apps can guide you well — but you have to leave your work, retype the problem into a chat tab, and lose your train of thought getting there.
Screenshot-to-solution tools hand you a finished answer. Useful in a pinch; teaches you almost nothing. Tomorrow you're stuck on the same kind of problem again.
Circles the exact term you missed, on the page you're already reading, and asks the question a good tutor would ask. You stay in your work. You do the work. You learn.
Hit ⌘⇧Space and drag over anything on screen — a PDF, your LMS, a slide, VS Code, a photo of handwritten work. No copy-pasting, no retyping equations.
Margin figures out why you're stuck, points at the key step with a circle or arrow drawn on your actual screen, and asks one guiding question.
Ask follow-ups in plain language — get a hint, an explanation, a check of your work. Still stuck? One click reveals the full worked solution — your choice, not the default.
Hint, explain, check my work, quiz me — you choose how much help you get. The final answer exists, but it's always an explicit choice, never the default.
Circles the mistake. Underlines the key line. Points an arrow at the term you missed. Annotations render on a click-through overlay, so you keep working underneath.
Drop in your syllabus or textbook PDF. Margin grounds every explanation in your class's notation and methods — not a random one from the internet.
One toggle runs the entire tutor on a local model. Nothing — not the screenshot, not your question — ever leaves the machine.
If you can see it, you can circle it: textbook PDFs, Canvas, lecture slides, Desmos graphs, LeetCode, a photo of handwritten work.
A real menu-bar app, not a browser tab. No login wall, no context switching — help is a keystroke away from whatever you're already doing.
Margin circles the part that needs substitution and asks:
Margin underlines the claim, leaves a short margin note, and asks:
It's 11pm, the problem set is due tomorrow, and you're stuck on question 4. Margin gets you un-stuck without leaving the page you're on.
Projected in class
∫ x·eˣ dx = ?
"Margin, give the class a hint — but don't solve it."
Project a problem, circle it live, and let Margin pose the guiding question while you walk the room. Built deliberately as a supplement to your teaching, not a shortcut around it.
Coming for tutors: the live teaching workspace. A private copilot that suggests the next guiding question mid-lesson, automatic session notes, a brief on each student before every session, and AI-generated practice between sessions — with the tutor in control the whole time.
Get early accessEvery session teaches Margin how you learn — not just what you asked. Over a semester it builds a private map of what you've mastered, where you slip, and which kinds of explanation actually land for you.
Most tools measure engagement. Margin measures independence: are you solving more on your own this month than last? That's the number we care about — and it's yours to see, or delete, any time.
"It sees only what you share and remembers only what helps you learn."
Margin never records or watches your screen. It captures the exact region you select, only in the moment you select it — every capture is user-initiated and visible as it happens.
Your PDFs are read, chunked, and embedded entirely on-device with Apple's built-in language models. The files are never uploaded anywhere.
Flip on local mode and inference runs on your own machine. No account, no API key, no network calls — a tutor that works in airplane mode.
Everything Margin learns about you lives on your Mac, readable and deletable. Private-session mode retains nothing at all — planned alongside app exclusions for banking, messages, and health.
Margin is currently in pilot — participants use it free, and pricing applies at general availability. Classroom and tutoring-center licenses: get in touch.
It's built to be the opposite. By default Margin refuses to hand over final answers — it identifies the type of problem, points at the key step, and asks a guiding question, the way a good tutor does. The full solution exists, but it's an explicit choice, visible and deliberate. Compare that with what students do today: paste the question into a chatbot and copy what comes back.
Two ways. First, you never leave your work — no retyping the problem into a chat tab; Margin sees exactly what you circled and answers beside it. Second, it's a tutor by design, not by prompt: hints-first pedagogy, grounding in your actual course materials, and drawings on your real screen instead of a wall of chat text.
Pilot participants use Margin free. At launch: a free tier, Student Pro at $18/month, and a $79 semester plan. Local mode is free forever — it runs on an open model on your own Mac.
A Mac running macOS 14 or later. That's it — during the pilot we'll get you set up in about five minutes, including local mode if you want the zero-cloud version.
It's strongest where seeing the work matters: calculus, statistics, intro programming, physics, chemistry, economics. If you can circle it, Margin can look at it — including graphs, diagrams, code, and handwritten work.
No. Margin is idle until you press the hotkey, and it sees exactly one screenshot: the region you circled. Screen Recording permission is required by macOS for any capture tool — you grant it once, and every capture is user-initiated.
We're working closely with a small group of students, teachers, and tutors before opening up. If that sounds like you — a STEM student on a Mac, a teacher who'd project it in class, or a tutor who wants the workspace early — we'd love to talk.
Or just email us: ritvikrustagi7@gmail.com