Overview
This project is backed by the Dimwit Pledge.
Parcourse turns a YouTube video into a course you can actually study. Paste a link and it comes back with sections, a summary and the takeaways worth keeping for each one, a quiz that tests whether you followed the argument rather than whether you remember a word, a one-page cheatsheet, and a knowledge graph that grows across everything you have taken.
It is not a place to find something to watch. There is no catalogue, no feed and nothing recommended, and Parcourse will never suggest what to learn next. You bring the link, or nothing happens.
Parcourse is already a word in English, an outdoor fitness trail lined with exercise stations, but that is not where this name comes from. It is a pun. Parcours is French for a route, a path, the way through something, and a course is, well, a course. Parcourse is the personal path you build through the videos you already enjoy.
Everything in a notebook is therefore there because someone put it there. Each account keeps its own courses, progress and graph, and nothing is pooled across an instance. An admin can open another person's knowledge graph and nothing else, which Users and Admin covers.
It is self-hosted, so all of that stays on your own machine, along with your API key. It runs on whichever model you point it at.
A Quick Note...
...before we dive into it.
A video belongs to whoever made it. Parcourse does not host, mirror or re-upload anything, and it claims none of it. The video plays from YouTube in YouTube's own player, so watching it inside a course is watching it on YouTube, and the course around it is written from the transcript that already came with it.
So if a video taught you something, go and subscribe to the person who made it, and support them with likes, comments and, if possible, direct donations, or however else they have asked to be supported. All Parcourse does is help you retain and understand what they taught you.
What a Course Contains
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Sections | The video split at its own turns, each with a summary and its key takeaways |
| Quiz | Multiple choice and written answers, over the whole course rather than per section |
| Notes | A sheet of your own to write on, in light markdown, saved as you type |
| Cheatsheet | One page of the points worth remembering, saveable as a PNG or a PDF |
| Knowledge graph | Fields, topics and skills, connected across every course you take |
Where to Go Next
| If you want to | Read |
|---|---|
| Set up an instance for the first time | First run |
| Run Parcourse yourself | Installing |
| Point it at a model | Providers and models |
| Look up a setting | Configuration |
| Work out why a video will not load | Troubleshooting |