a spin on "Explain Like I'm 5"—but for people who want expert-level nuance.

Check it out at https://elie-l51t.onrender.com/ or try it out locally.

ELIE is an interactive Dash Plotly app that dynamically tailors explanations to your current knowledge.

1. Choose a topic: Enter something you'd like to learn—say, "quaternions".
2. See your baseline: ELIE delivers an initial explanation plus a concept map (e.g. "complex numbers," "rotation," "linear algebra").
3. Click unfamiliar nodes: Select any concept you're not yet comfortable with—e.g. "complex numbers"—and ELIE refines the explanation around that prerequisite.
4. Refine to mastery: Keep exploring unknown nodes; the map and explanation evolve until they perfectly match your expertise.

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/tomashrdlicka/ELIE.git
cd ELIE

Create and activate a conda environment:

conda create -n elie-env python=3.12
conda activate elie-env

Install the package:

pip install -e .

Set up your Google Gemini API key:

export GEMINI_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"

Launch the dash-plotly app:

python -m elie.app

Click on the link in the terminal, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8050/ to open the app in your browser.

This is a hackathon project started at the CompMotifs: Hack the Sciences event in June 2025, by Tomáš Hrdlička, Eva Sevenster, and Niko Sirmpilatze.