devenjarvis/lathe

Lathe generates hands-on, multi-part technical tutorials on demand using AI, then gives you a clean reading interface to work through them yourself. The core idea is using AI to teach you rather than think for you, instead of having a model write code on your behalf, it writes a tutorial that walks you through building something from scratch, and you do the actual typing and learning. You start by prompting your coding assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and others are supported) with something like "build a 3D slicer in Erlang." The AI generates a structured tutorial with multiple parts, exercises, and side notes that prompt deeper thinking. You then open a local web interface to read and work through the tutorial at your own pace. If you get stuck or something seems off, you can ask the AI questions, have it verify that the tutorial actually works, or request an extension with a new section. The tool itself never calls an AI model directly, all the AI work happens in your existing coding agent session, so it uses whatever subscription or setup you already have. This is built for self-directed learners who want to dive into topics where good tutorials are scarce. The creator gives examples like writing 3D slicing software from scratch or learning embedded development with Zig, domains where human-written resources are thin or nonexistent. If you're the type who learns best by building things step by step and wants a guided path into an obscure or emerging area, this tool fills that gap. If a well-written human tutorial already exists for what you want to learn, the creator straight-up recommends using that instead. The honest tradeoff: AI-generated tutorials won't match the quality, personality, or architectural wisdom of a great human-written guide. But they're always available, infinitely patient with questions, willing to fix mistakes, and they actually finish the multi-part series they start. The tool also includes thoughtful touches like source documentation and transparency about which model and prompt produced each tutorial, so you always know what you're getting.