Wondering, a Duolingo for anything

I found a learning app I like. It’s called Wondering.

Who’s behind it

Wondering was made by Cheng-Wei Hu, an engineer who worked at Google Labs on the NotebookLM team, and the one who brought the Mind Map feature to NotebookLM.

Cheng-Wei quit and built this app from scratch, saying: “I left NotebookLM to solve a bigger problem in learning.”

The vision is to build a “Duolingo for anything”, a platform for learning any topic, not just languages.

Someone who worked on learning tools at Google is now building their own, which made me curious.

What’s inside

A wide course catalog

As soon as you get in, you’re greeted by a catalog of courses sorted into categories: Strategy, Business, Psychology, Marketing, AI, Decision Making, Cognitive Science, Design and lots more.

Example courses include “Positioning” (Al Ries), “Zero to One” (Peter Thiel), and others. You can also search by title, author or tag, or make your own custom course.

The courses are based on well-known books and frameworks.

A structured learning path

Every course is broken into sections and lessons, laid out like a step-by-step roadmap. For example, the course “SEO and AI for Designers” has the path Portfolio Growth → Section Review → Client Strategy → and so on.

You can see your progress in each section (say, 3/3 lessons completed). You don’t have to think “what do I learn next?” The roadmap is already there.

This is what makes it different from just asking ChatGPT. In ChatGPT you get answers, but there’s no progression.

Knowledge Cards

Every course has “Knowledge Cards”: the key concepts you’ve learned, grouped by subtopic.

For example, the SEO course has a “Modern SEO” section (Search Intent Alignment, Semantic Understanding, Structured Data) and an “AI Search” section (AI Indexing, Answer Engines, Intent-based Content).

That’s 32 cards in total in one course. It’s like having automatic flashcards that track everything you’ve absorbed.

Visual lessons, not a wall of text

Every lesson opens with a visual diagram showing how the concepts relate to each other. For example, “Content Planning” is broken into AI Discovery, Strategic Value and Editorial Calendar, all visually connected.

Below that there’s a short explanation and a “Check My Understanding” button so you can test yourself right away.

It feels very Duolingo: visual, bite-sized, not overwhelming.

In-depth explanations you can ask about

Click on a particular concept and you get a full explanation written in simple language.

Take Editorial Calendar: it explains what it is, why it matters, which tools you can use (Google Sheets, Trello, Notion), and gives an analogy, a “production timeline for a design project”.

Below that there are suggested follow-up questions and a chat box where you can ask anything about that material. So you’re not just reading. You can have a dialogue with what you’re learning.

Magic Insights and practice

When you finish a lesson, “Magic Insights” shows up: an AI summary of what you explored and asked about while learning. You also get Knowledge Cards collected automatically from that lesson.

And there’s a “Start Practice” button for practicing, so it’s not just reading and then forgetting.

This is what separates Wondering from just an article or a video: there’s a retention loop.

Streaks

Exactly like Duolingo, there’s a day streak with a fire icon and a weekly tracker (S-S-M-T-W-T-F).

“Let’s build a habit of learning every day!”

Simple gamification, but powerful. You want to open the app every day, even for just 5 minutes, because you don’t want to lose your streak.

Where it fits

The way I see it, the ideal flow is:

  • Wondering: learning the foundations of a topic from zero, structured and guided.
  • NotebookLM: deep dives into specific material you already have (PDFs, videos, articles).

So Wondering first to get the general picture, then NotebookLM for in-depth research.

It makes sense that Cheng-Wei is the one who built this. Cheng-Wei knows NotebookLM’s gap: it’s powerful for analysis, but it doesn’t serve people who want to start from zero.

Is it worth it?

The app is still in early access. There’s an “Early-bird pricing” upgrade option, so the price now is probably lower than it will be later.

What I like:

  • You don’t have to figure out where to start
  • The lessons are visual and bite-sized
  • There’s practice and knowledge cards for retention
  • You can learn topics that aren’t on Duolingo or Coursera

If you’re curious about lots of things and don’t know where to start, it’s worth a try.

Here it is: wondering.app. You can use the access code DELIGHT (here’s Wondering’s post on X). On the web, you don’t need an access code.