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About RationalGrid
Transforming how people explore ideas, engage with arguments, and build shared understanding — one node at a time. Start your own grid now and share it if you want.
Mission & Vision
Work in Progress"To improve public understanding and learning around serious concepts, arguments and discourse using AI tools in a not-for-profit, open access environment."
What is RationalGrid?
A new kind of tool for a clearer new kind of thinking.
Helping Critical Thinking
We live in an era of unprecedented information access, yet the quality of discourse often feels lacking. Echo chambers and motivated reasoning lead to people talking past each other rather than engaging meaningfully. We built RationalGrid because we believe meaningful exchanges happen when you can explore assumptions at a fundamental level and see how reasonable people can hold conflicting values and opinions.
Active Learning, Not Passive Consumption
Large Language Models provide unprecedented access to knowledge, but traditional AI chat interfaces limit their potential for deep learning. RationalGrid transforms AI interaction into an active, exploratory process where learners branch out in multiple directions, creating a personalized knowledge map that evolves with their curiosity.
What It Does
Start building your grid by typing a thought, question or provocation. Sign up, fill in your profile and keep your grids and ideas in easy view.
Powerful tools designed for deep exploration and collaboration.
Grow Your Grid
Every response becomes a node (seen as a box) in your knowledge grid, revealing connections, suggesting ideas and enabling non-linear exploration.
Deep Dive If You Wish
Highlight any term — or node — to instantly explore its meaning, implications, and connections within your knowledge map.
You're Not Alone
Collaborate with other users in real-time on shared knowledge maps. Think together, explore together, learn together. Other AI tools don't offer this.
Persistent & Searchable
Every grid you create is saved (unless you delete it) and fully searchable. Build a personal library of explored ideas.
Portable Output
Export your knowledge graphs as PDF, JSON, or Markdown. Your work goes where you need it. You can share your grid to your networks or social media if you want.
AI-Powered Branching
Explore the pros and cons, comparisons and differentiators of your ideas and arguments from any node. Let curiosity guide the path.
Additional Capabilities
Presentation Mode
Edit and highlight the key points from your grid that you most want to share — for meetings, lectures, conferences, social media or big screens. Get your audience engaged swiftly, while enabling them to drill down into your detailed grid separately, on demand.
Highlighted Grids
Users like you are creating hundreds of grids on RationalGrid. We try to highlight the best of them on our home page. We will also be running a series of "curated grids" featuring ideas being explored by invited guests. Get in touch if you'd like to be considered.
For Educators
RationalGrid is a powerful classroom tool. Students can explore complex topics collaboratively, map out arguments visually, and develop critical thinking skills through structured inquiry.
- Students explore topics at their own pace and depth
- Shared whiteboards enable real-time group discussion
- Visual argument maps develop critical thinking skills
- Free and open access — no paywall, no gatekeeping
"An amazing free specialised AI tool to explore philosophical ideas around pretty much anything — from academic questions to films to… hamsters! All at one's fingertips, in a matter of seconds, with in-built tools for a sophisticated, yet accessible dialectic. Bravo!"
Our Partners
Working together to make knowledge more accessible.
Philosophy for All
A London-based charity making philosophy accessible to everyone through free events and workshops.
Visit websiteYour Organisation Here
We're looking for educational institutions and non-profits who share our mission of open access learning.
Partner With Us
Join a growing community dedicated to improving discourse and critical thinking through technology.
Interested in partnering with us? Get in touch .
The People Behind RationalGrid
Built with care by a small, passionate team.
Martin Loat
Partnerships Director
Coming Soon
Education Advisor
Coming Soon
Research Partner
Tom Berman
Founder & Developer
Tom created RationalGrid out of a conviction that AI could do much more than answer questions in a linear chat — it could help people actually think. The idea was to build a tool where every response becomes a node in a living knowledge map, letting users branch, compare, and explore ideas visually rather than scrolling through walls of text.
As the sole developer, Tom designed and built the entire platform from the ground up — the real-time collaborative graph engine, the AI integration layer, the presentation mode, export system, and everything in between. The stack is Elixir and Phoenix LiveView, chosen for their strengths in real-time, concurrent applications.
Tom's background spans software engineering and a long-standing interest in philosophy and critical thinking. RationalGrid is where those two worlds meet: a tool built with care to help people reason better, together.
Martin Loat
Partnerships Director
After getting a degree in philosophy, Martin started his career in journalism, specialising in business matters (including a stint writing about advertising for The Guardian).
Entrepreneurial by nature, he went on to launch and build a B2B public relations agency, which specialised in supporting marketing industry and tech clients. When he sold this company in 2023 it had 50 people working in London and New York and clients including Samsung.
Martin is a proven social action campaigner. He was awarded an OBE in 2023 for his voluntary work chairing the Campaign for Equal Civil Partnerships which helped get the law changed and civil partnerships introduced for heterosexual couples in England & Wales in 2019.
Martin is now an angel investor, strategic comms advisor and leadership mentor to a number of growing businesses, including in AI.
We'd Love Your Feedback
Help us improve RationalGrid — tell us what's working, what's not, or what you'd like to see.
Ready to explore?
Start mapping your ideas, challenging assumptions, and building understanding — it's free to use and always will be.
RationalGrid is open source. Explore the code, report issues, or contribute.
View on GitHub