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Glossary

Plain-English definitions of the terms Hikara uses, from echoes, challenges and bridges to smart shelves and streak freezes.

Blind spots
Subjects your library has little or nothing on, out of the range of themes Hikara recognises. The Insights page shows them so you can decide whether to read into them.
Book personality
An AI-written portrait of you as a reader, drawn from your last few books or from the books of a period you choose. You can keep it private or share it as a page.
Bridge
A connection between two books from different fields that share an idea, such as a biology book whose argument maps onto a business strategy book. Bridges show how an idea travels between subjects. How the three connection types work.
Challenge
A connection between two books that disagree or pull against each other on the same question. Reading them together means weighing one argument against the other.
Circles
Small private groups that share a feed of the books members start and finish, the highlights they share and their streak milestones, with reactions.
Connection strength
A score from 0 to 100 for how strong a connection between two books is. Hikara's AI is instructed to be honest rather than generous, so weak links score low.
Counter-read
A suggested book that argues against something you've read, so you hear the other side of it.
Daily connection card
One connection from your own library, shown each day on the Reading tab. Once you've seen them all, earlier cards come round again.
Dialogues
Conversations with your books: pick one or more and ask a question, and the answers draw on the passages you've highlighted in them.
Echo
A connection between two books that reinforce the same idea, often from different angles. Reading them together deepens the idea rather than repeating it. How the three connection types work.
Gap finder
Select two to five books in your library and Hikara suggests one book that would bring them together. How to find connections between your books.
Genre Constellation
A view of your whole library that clusters books by theme, on the Visualizations page. See it with a sample library.
Highlight resurfacing
One of your saved highlights shown each day on the Reading tab, picked at random with older highlights more likely, so passages you'd half-forgotten come back.
Mood Galaxy
A view of your whole library arranged by how the books feel, on the Visualizations page. See it with a sample library.
Personal knowledge management (PKM)
A system for capturing, organising and connecting what you learn. Hikara covers the reading part: your library, your notes on books and the connections between them. Building a second brain from your reading.
Reading knowledge graph
Your library as a network: books are the points, connections between them are the lines, and each connection has a type, a strength and a reason. The full guide.
Reading session
A logged stretch of reading: pages or a percentage, minutes, and optionally your mood. Sessions count toward your streak and your reading-pace insights.
Smart shelf
A shelf that fills itself from rules you set (status, rating, category, author, title, whether you own the book or have notes on it) instead of books you add by hand.
Streak and freeze credits
Your streak counts the days in a row you've logged reading. Freeze credits are spent automatically to cover a missed day or two, so one busy day doesn't reset it.
Thematic heatmap
A chart on the Insights page showing how your reading spreads across themes, and how strongly each theme connects to the rest.
Up Next queue
Your ordered to-read list. Books you've ranked come first; after those, Hikara nudges shorter books forward.
Wrapped
A recap of your reading: monthly in the app, plus a year in review you can publish as a public page and unpublish later.

See these in your own library

Import your Goodreads library or add a few books, and Hikara starts finding the echoes, challenges and bridges between them. Questions about how it works are answered in the FAQ.

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