Hi,
I'm an insight meditation practitioner and a product manager based in the Bay Area. A couple of months ago I started building a tool for myself to solve a problem I kept running into after retreat: the teachings I'd just sat with were immediately hard to reach. The talks existed, on Dharmaseed, on teacher websites, on my phone, but I couldn't search them by meaning, follow a thread across a teacher's body of work, or find the moment I half-remembered from Tuesday's sit.
So I built a way to do that. There are decades of wonderful talks on Dharmaseed and elsewhere, given freely in the spirit of dana, and you basically can't search them by what was said. Now I can ask about a half-remembered anecdote and get back the exact passage, with the transcript and a play button.
It's become a genuinely valuable part of my practice, and I'd be happy if it were useful to others too. If you're familiar with Dharmaseed, this is much the same, with some added intelligence layered on top.
Like Dharmaseed, this is a contribution, not a commercial thing. I've built it with privacy in mind: no logging, no telemetry, nothing sold or shared.
Right now it works with talks from Dharmaseed, Tara Brach, IMS, and Spirit Rock, with Audio Dharma coming soon. I'm sharing it with a small circle of practitioners and have room for a few more, and I'd especially love to hear from teachers or centers who are curious about it.
If that's you, fill out the short form below and I'll be in touch.
— Bill
Beta is free. No spam, ever.
questions
Wisdom Companion is a tool for insight (Vipassana) meditation practitioners that makes decades of recorded dharma talks searchable by meaning. It offers semantic search, full transcripts, personal libraries, and a way to give dana directly to teachers.
Talks are drawn from freely shared archives including Dharmaseed, Tara Brach’s collection, Insight Meditation Society (IMS), Spirit Rock, and more.
Yes. Like the tradition it draws from, Wisdom Companion is offered as a contribution to the community in the spirit of dana — not as a commercial product.
Privacy is built in from the start: no logging, no telemetry, and no data sold or shared. Your practice history is yours.
Both sides of the teacher–student relationship: students who want to revisit and stay connected to what they heard on retreat — especially if they didn’t take notes — and teachers and centers who want their talks to be easy to find and return to.
Ask about a topic, an anecdote, or a feeling in plain language, and the app finds the exact moment in the right talk — with a timestamp back to the audio and a full, searchable transcript.