Why sign up?

What an account adds

It remembers where you got to. Every plan section you read and every primer slide you see is saved as you go, so you can close the tab mid-section and pick up in the same place — on your phone, on a work laptop, months later.

You decide when something is finished. Reaching the end of a plan is not the same as having worked through it, so nothing is marked complete on your behalf — there is a control at the end of every primer and plan, and pressing it is the only thing that counts. Finished items show the date in the sidebar wherever you open them, and you can undo it at any time.

And it shows you where you are. Your learning puts all five skills on one page: how far through each primer and plan you have got, what you have finished, and what you have not opened yet. Not a score, and nothing anyone else can see — just an honest picture of what you have covered, so the next thing to do is obvious. It is in the menu under your avatar once you are signed in.

Signed out, none of this is kept. The site works fully as a guest — every page, every plan, all of it free to read — but nothing is written down, so each visit starts from the top.

That record is also the foundation for what comes next, and it is worth being straight about which parts are built and which are not.

The news worth keeping is built. The News page carries a few stories every week, and most of them are worth reading once. An account is for the handful that are worth more than that.

Save as many as you like — they collect behind a Saved filter on the News page, so the ones you kept are one click away from every visit rather than somewhere in the archive. Pin exactly one: the single story you want in front of you, held at the top of the list until you choose a different one. Pinning a second asks first, and tells you which one it would replace, because quietly dropping something you chose is not a thing this site does.

And write a note. Up to 500 characters against any story — why it mattered, what you would do about it, who needs to see it. A Has Notes filter brings back everything you have written on. No other account can read it. Most tables here have an admin view; notes deliberately have none, so there is no page anywhere — mine included — that lists what people wrote. Whoever runs a database can always reach what is stored in it, and Privacy says so plainly; what is ruled out here is a feature that surfaces it. You can edit or delete a note whenever you like, and deleting your account takes every one with it.

None of this is available signed out, because there is nowhere to put it. A guest's News page is the same feed, read once.

One thing is still coming, and it is worth being straight about which:

• Notes as you go, on a plan. Capture a thought against a plan section while it is fresh, then read it back in place or alongside every other note for that plan. Notes on news stories work today; notes on plan sections do not yet.

That one is marked Soon in the table below rather than counted as a reason to sign up today. It is being built on top of the same record an account is already keeping, which is why signing up now means having something to look at when it lands.

Compare guest and account, line by line 10 rows

	As a guest	With an account
Read everything on the site	Yes	Yes
Resume where you left off	No	Yes
Quiz answers and open sections kept	No	Yes
The same position on another device	No	Yes
Light or dark theme remembered	Yes	Yes
Notes on a plan section, kept and searchable	No	Soon
Mark a primer or plan as complete, with the date	No	Yes
A page showing how far you are through each skill	No	Yes
Saved news stories, with your own note against each	No	Yes
Filter the news down to what you saved or wrote on	No	Yes
Pin one story to the top of your own News page	No	Yes
Told when new skills and features land	No	If you want it
Email address required	No	Yes

Soon means the groundwork is in place and the feature is not. It is on the table so you can see where this is going, not so it counts as a reason to sign up today.

What browsing as a guest means

Nothing at all is stored about your reading. Not on our side, and not in your browser. There is no anonymous profile quietly accumulating against you, waiting to be claimed by an account later. If you read the whole library as a guest and then sign up, you start with a clean, empty record — because there was never anything else.

The trade is exactly the one in the table: a guest gets the entire library and no memory of it.

What an account does not mean

• Occasional email, and you choose whether to get it. Two messages are triggered by you and always sent: a confirmation when you sign up, and a link when you ask to reset your password. Beyond those, an account can also tell you when something is actually new — a skill added to the library, or a feature like the learning tracker going live. That is a tickbox on the sign-up form, unticked until you tick it, and every one of those messages carries an unsubscribe link. It is occasional and it is about this site; there is no digest, no drip sequence, and nothing sent on someone else's behalf. Turning it off never affects the two you asked for.
• No advertising, and nothing sold or shared. Your email address and your progress are used to run your account and for nothing else.
• No tracking you around the web. The site carries no advertising or social pixels of any kind.
• Not a commitment. You can delete your account yourself from the account page, at any time, without asking anyone. It happens immediately and no copy is kept.

What is collected, where it is stored, and who processes it is set out in full on the privacy and cookies page. It is worth two minutes before you decide.