How to Use AskOrca: A Quick-Start Guide

1. Introduction

Welcome to AskOrca—the reading and thinking assistant built for curious minds, researchers, students, and founders who want answers fast, not fluff. Whether you're diving into a dense book, analyzing a research paper, or trying to turn scattered notes into a sharp essay or insight, AskOrca helps you get there faster with AI-powered reading, summarizing, and question answering.

In this quick-start guide, you’ll learn how to go from signup to your first "aha" moment in under 10 minutes. We’ll walk you through importing content, asking smart questions, and exporting ready-to-use summaries and insights. No fluff, no friction—just a focused walkthrough to help you unlock the full potential of AskOrca right away.

2. Getting Started: Set Up in 2 Minutes

Once you’re on the AskOrca app, logging in is quick—just use your Apple ID or Google account. No passwords, no friction. You’ll land on the dashboard, where you’ll see a list of sample or previously summarized content. But before you upload anything, let’s walk through two key setup steps that shape your entire experience.

AskOrca is built for multilingual readers. Whether the source content is in English, Chinese, Spanish, or Korean, you can choose which language you want the AI to respond in—perfect if you’re reading something not in your native tongue. This is a game-changer for students, researchers, or global readers who want to unlock insights from foreign-language materials without needing full translation tools.

Next, pick your AI engine. Most users will be perfectly served by ChatGPT-4o mini, our default model. It’s smart, fast, and efficient. If you’re doing more advanced tasks—say, long-form analysis or specialized technical material—you can try other models like Gemini or GPT-4o, which may provide different strengths.

But here’s what to know: AskOrca runs on a credit-based system.

• 100 credits = ~1 million tokens on ChatGPT-4o mini
• More powerful models cost 300–500 credits per million tokens
• Every AI interaction—summarizing, answering, translating—uses tokens
• You’ll always see your remaining credit balance in the dashboard

To help you get started, we give you 100 credits on the house. That’s enough to process hundreds of articles or several full-length books—plenty to explore what AskOrca can do. If you're reading about 5 articles per day, those free credits could easily last weeks or even months.

Once you’ve customized your language and model settings, you’re ready to upload your first source and experience your first “aha” moment. Let’s dive in.

Step 2: Send Content to AskOrca (From Anywhere You Read)

Now that your settings are customized, it’s time to feed AskOrca some content. The magic of AskOrca is that it meets you where you read—whether it’s in your browser, your email, or your favorite apps.

Many users aren’t familiar with this workflow at first, so here’s how it works:

You’re reading a long article in Safari on your iPhone. Tap the Share icon → scroll to AskOrca → tap it. Boom—AskOrca opens and starts processing the article, ready to summarize or answer your questions.

Tip: If you don’t see AskOrca in the share list, scroll to the right, tap “three dot options,” and click AskOrca icon.

You’re watching a podcast or lecture on YouTube. Tap Share → choose AskOrca. AskOrca grabs the video link, auto-retrieve its transcript, and lets you ask questions like “What’s the main argument in this talk?” or “List the guest’s key takeaways.”

Reading a blog post from Substack or another newsletter app? Tap the Share button and send it to AskOrca. Great for condensing long posts or asking for counterpoints and summaries.

AskOrca also supports manually adding content by tapping the upper right corner + button:

• Pasting a URL – Just copy the article, video, or blog link and paste it into AskOrca’s input field.
• Uploading a PDF – Great for research papers, whitepapers, or ebooks.
• Uploading an Audio File (MP3/M4A) – AskOrca transcribes and processes audio from lectures, interviews, or meetings.
• Pasting a Block of Text – Works well if you copied something from email, Kindle or a scanned document.

On your AskOrca dashboard, where you see the list of all your imported or processed content, you can keep things organized easily.

Swipe left on any content title to reveal two quick actions:

• Rename – Update the title to something more meaningful
• Delete – Remove the content from your list

However you choose to send content in, AskOrca transforms it into a structured conversation—ready for summarizing, clarifying, and diving deeper.

Next, we’ll show you how to start asking powerful questions and turning that content into insight.

Step 3: Explore, Ask, and Unlock Insights Instantly

Once AskOrca finishes processing your content—whether it’s an article, video, podcast, or PDF—it gets to work immediately.

Right away, you’ll see a short summary of the content at the top of the screen, followed by three suggested follow-up questions. These are designed to help you dive deeper with a single tap. For example:

• “What’s the author’s main argument?”
• “Summarize this in bullet points.”
• “Any potential bias or assumptions?”

Tap any question and AskOrca will instantly generate a thoughtful, focused answer.

Want more? Just swipe left on the content card or tap the three-dot menu in the upper right corner. This reveals the right sidebar—your shortcut to deeper insights.

Here, you’ll find predefined one-tap actions, including:

• Main Points – Key ideas, distilled fast
• Long Summary – A more detailed and structured overview, great for study or reporting
• Takeaways – What you should remember
• Key Quotes – Memorable or impactful lines from the source
• Write a Tweet – Summarize the content in under 280 characters

Of course, you can also type in your own questions directly into the chatbot. Want to challenge a claim? Ask for counterpoints? Translate a tricky paragraph? Just ask.

Even better: tap the “+” button next to the chat input to access custom prompts.

With custom prompts, you can:

• Create your own one-tap actions
• Avoid retyping your favorite questions over and over
• Tailor AskOrca to your unique workflow

For example:

“List all the key facts and numbers mentioned in this article.”
“Turn this into an outline for a blog post.”
“What would be the investor take on this content?”

Once saved, these prompts are always one tap away—making AskOrca smarter the more you use it.

Step 4: Copy, Share, and Access the Full Content

Just tap the copy button under any response in the chat. This instantly copies the AI’s reply to your clipboard—so you can paste it into:

• A Notion doc
• A Google Doc or Word file
• Your notes app
• An email or Slack message
• Even a newsletter draft

This makes AskOrca perfect for people who read to create, not just consume.

Want to quickly pass an idea, insight, or summary to someone else? Tap the share button below any reply. You’ll be able to:

• Select one or more messages from the conversation
• Turn them into a clean, shareable image
• Share it via text, email, social, or messaging apps

If you want to go beyond the summary and see the full original source, just open the right-side menu and tap “Original Content.” From there, you can:

• Read the full text inside AskOrca
• Tap the copy button at the bottom to copy the entire article or transcript
• Paste it into another app for deeper work, edits, or archiving

Step 5: Processing Video and Audio—Cheap, Simple, Powerful

AskOrca isn’t just for articles and PDFs—it also works great with video and audio content, like YouTube talks, podcasts, and voice recordings. Here’s how it works depending on the source:

When you share a YouTube video link to AskOrca, we don’t transcribe it ourselves. Instead, we pull the existing transcript directly from YouTube.

This has two big advantages:

• No transcription cost – It’s completely free, just token cost for the text processing
• Slightly lower accuracy – YouTube’s automatic captions can be rough, especially with accents or technical content

Still, it’s a great option for getting quick summaries and asking questions about interviews, lectures, and podcasts already available on YouTube.

If you share an audio file from apps like Voice Memos, Overcast, or directly upload a recording (MP3, M4A), AskOrca will automatically transcribe it for you.

Here’s what to expect:

• 100 credits per 60 minutes of audio
• We charge based on actual audio length (rounded up to the second)
• No monthly plans or usage lock-ins—just pay per use with your existing credit balance

Compared to other services that charge $10–30/month or $10+/hour, AskOrca’s audio transcription is far more affordable and flexible.

Once transcribed, your audio becomes a regular piece of content in AskOrca:

• You get a summary and suggested follow-up questions
• You can ask for insights, pull out quotes, or write tweets
• You can access the full transcript in the right sidebar
• You can copy or share the transcript just like any article

Whether it’s a podcast episode, a voice note, or a recorded lecture—AskOrca helps you unlock the content and the context with zero hassle.

Step 6: Special Considerations for Certain Content Types

AskOrca is designed to handle a wide variety of content—but there are a few important exceptions and edge cases to be aware of. Here’s what you need to know:

While AskOrca supports most PDFs, some files—especially those made up entirely of scanned images—can’t be processed directly. These documents don’t contain actual text, so our system can’t extract or summarize them. We’re working on adding OCR (optical character recognition) support in the future, but for now, scanned-only PDFs aren’t supported.

Some websites use advanced JavaScript frameworks that interfere with our ability to retrieve clean content. In these cases, AskOrca will notify you that an error occurred. You can try copying the main content as plain text and pasting it into the app instead.

For articles behind paywalls—such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or The Information—you can still use AskOrca. Here’s how:

1. Open the article in Safari (where you’re logged in)
2. Tap the Share button
3. Choose AskOrca from the share options

This allows AskOrca to process the full content through your logged-in session and apply all its AI features, including summarization and insight extraction.

If a web page contains only a few lines of text, AskOrca may choose not to process it. This is to avoid generating low-quality or misleading results, as AI models need sufficient context to provide accurate answers.

We’re constantly improving AskOrca. If you come across a content type we don’t yet support—or have a use case you’d like us to consider—don’t hesitate to reach out. Your feedback directly shapes what we build next.