Your themes

Search finds words. A theme finds a subject.

If you have thought about grief in a novel, in an essay and in a book about rivers, those thoughts share almost no words, so no amount of searching for "grief" will bring them together. Ruxpin notices the subject underneath and keeps a theme for it, so you can see all three at once.

Where to find them

Open Search. Before you type anything, under What you keep returning to, your strongest themes are listed. Tap one to see every thought in it.

Start typing and themes that match appear above the text results, under Themes. Matching looks at a theme's name and its short description, so you can find one by the words you would use for it rather than the words Ruxpin chose.

What a theme shows you

Each one carries its name, a sentence saying what it is about, and how much of your record it covers: 31 thoughts · 3 sources. The sources are the point: a theme that spans four readings is a thread through your reading life, not a tag on one book.

Open a theme and you get its thoughts, newest first, with an Ask Rux box at the top so you can ask about the whole subject at once.

How they come about

Ruxpin works them out as your thoughts land. Nothing is asked of you, and there is nothing to set up or tag. A theme starts the first time you think about something, and grows every time you come back to it.

The sentence describing a theme is rewritten as the theme grows, about once a week, so it keeps up with what you have actually put in it rather than describing the first couple of thoughts forever. The name stays put.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• They take a while to appear. A handful of thoughts is not yet a pattern. If Search shows no themes yet, keep capturing. They arrive on their own.
• The names are Ruxpin's, not yours. They are short and plain, and occasionally they will name a thread you had not noticed you were pulling. That is the useful part. You cannot rename or remove a theme yet.

A theme never changes your thoughts. Your words are kept exactly as you spoke them, and a theme is only an index pointing at them. The same thought can belong to a theme, sit in its source, and turn up in search, all at once.

Themes and Rux

Rux reads them too. When you ask a question, Rux looks for the themes it is about and brings back what you have thought on that subject, including old thoughts you phrased in words your question does not contain. That is why a question sometimes surfaces something from months ago that you would not have found by searching for it.

Rux still only ever draws on your own thoughts, and still shows you which ones. See Asking Rux.