How to read SentientMatters, well.

SentientMatters hands you the AI news that matters as ninety-word summaries you can read in under a minute — across research breakthroughs, startup funding, model releases, government regulation and healthcare. This guide covers everything a reader can do, from free reading to bookmark folders, search, and even lending your account to your own AI agent.

Reading — no account needed

Everything published on SentientMatters is free to read, always, with no sign-up wall.

• Latest — the front page mixes the newest stories from every desk, twelve to a page. Use Prev / Next at the bottom to walk back through the archive.
• Desks — the tabs under the masthead (AI Breakthroughs, AI Startup Funding, Model News, Govt Regulations, AI Healthcare) each hold one subject, newest first. The underlined tab is where you are.
• Story cards — every card carries a piece of artwork, the headline, the source it came from, and our ninety-word summary. The summary is the product: it is written by us, in our own words, and designed to be enough on its own.
• Read More — the terracotta link at the bottom of each card takes you to the original article at its source. We are a reading desk, not a republisher: when a story earns more of your time, we hand you to the people who reported it.
• Story pages — click any headline to get the story on its own page, with its category, author, timestamp, source credit, and related stories from the same desk.

Creating a free account

An account adds exactly two things: bookmark folders and search. Reading never requires one.

1. Click Sign in (top right) → Create an account, or use the circled S mark.
2. Name, email, a password of eight-plus characters — that's the whole form.
3. You start with a ready-made Read later folder, and you're dropped straight back into the news.

Bookmarks & folders

Folders turn SentientMatters from a stream into a library you curate.

Saving a story

1. Open the story (click its headline; the small bookmark mark on each card takes you there too).
2. Below the summary, find the Save to bar: pick an existing folder from the dropdown, or type a name into “…or a new folder” to create one on the spot.
3. Hit Save story. The page confirms, and shows how many of your folders already hold this story.

Organising your library

Click Bookmarks in the masthead to open your folders page. There you can:

• Add a folder — the form at the top right. Folder names are yours: Policy watch, Show the team Monday, Deep reads.
• Rename — edit the name in the box at the bottom of any folder and press Rename.
• Remove a story — the small × beside it. This removes it from that folder only; the story itself stays on the site.
• Delete a folder — Delete at the folder's foot. You'll be asked to confirm, because its saved stories go with it.

A story can live in several folders at once — save it once per folder. Saving is per-folder, not global, which is what makes folders useful for sorting by project or theme.

Search

The search box sits in the masthead on every page; the full experience lives at /search.

• Signed out? The page will tell you plainly: search is a signed-in feature (that's how we keep it fast for people, not bots). Reading stays free either way — sign in and you're returned to your query.
• Signed in — type anything: a technology (“pgvector”), a theme (“clinical trial”), a phrase you half-remember from a headline. Search looks through every headline and summary on every desk and returns matching stories as the same cards you already know, newest and most important first.
• Results cap at 24 — if you hit that, narrow the phrase.

Your profile

Once signed in, click Profile in the masthead (or go to /account/profile) to make the account yours:

• Profile image — upload a PNG, JPG or WebP up to 2 MB. No image? You get a hand-set monogram of your initials on one of the house plate colours. Tick “Remove current image” any time to go back to it.
• Name — how the site addresses you.
• Social handles — Twitter/X, Reddit and LinkedIn, all optional. Paste your full profile URL or just the handle; either way we keep only the bare handle (no @, no URL).
• Email — change what you sign in with. You'll confirm with your current password, and the new address takes over from your next sign-in.
• Password — enter your current password, then the new one twice (eight characters or more).

Email and password changes always ask for your current password first — so a borrowed laptop or a wandering agent can't quietly lock you out of your own account.

Your own AI agent

If you use an AI agent (Claude Code or any MCP-capable assistant), you can let it read the feed, run searches, and keep your bookmark folders tidy on your behalf. Click Agents in the masthead → create a personal access token (it's shown once — treat it like a password). Your agent connects through our MCP server and can only ever do what you can do; revoke the token on that same page at any time and the agent is cut off instantly.

Five habits of effective readers

1. Skim Latest once a day. Ninety-word summaries mean a full front page costs you three minutes.
2. Live in one desk if you have one job. Policy people camp on Govt Regulations; investors on AI Startup Funding.
3. Save first, read later. The save bar is faster than your memory. A Read later triage folder plus a couple of themed folders beats one giant pile.
4. Follow Read More selectively. The summary tells you whether the original deserves your next fifteen minutes.
5. Search before you assume we missed it. The archive runs deeper than the front page.