BuddhaUR
A mobile-first AI learning companion for early Buddhist wisdom. Features an AI Buddhist teacher trained on authentic suttas, providing conversational lessons, meditation guidance, practice quizzes, and citation-backed answers to your questions about the Dhamma.
Hero ideas
- Your Buddhist teacher, always in your pocket
- Learn the Dhamma through conversation, not lectures
- Ancient wisdom meets modern AI
- Buddhism the way the Buddha taught it: through questions and practice
- Authentic teachings, personal guidance, daily practice
Overview
BuddhaUR is a mobile-first learning companion for exploring early Buddhist wisdom through conversation. The app features an AI-powered Buddhist teacher who draws from authentic ancient texts to provide personalized, citation-backed guidance on meditation, ethics, and the path to liberation. Think of it as having a knowledgeable, patient Dhamma teacher available 24/7 in your pocket.
Unlike static Buddhist apps that present meditation timers or text libraries, BuddhaUR creates an interactive learning experience. Every teaching is grounded in the earliest Buddhist sources (translations by Bhikkhu Sujato from SuttaCentral), every claim is cited, and every conversation adapts to your personal journey. The app uses RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology to ensure responses are grounded in authentic sources—no hallucinations, just verifiable Dhamma.
Whether you're completely new to Buddhism or a seasoned practitioner, BuddhaUR meets you where you are. Learn through structured lessons on 16 core topics, practice with adaptive quizzes, meditate with a beautiful timer, and build daily practice streaks—all within a calm, thoughtfully designed interface that embodies the principles it teaches.
Why we built it
Buddhist teachings are profound, but accessing them can be intimidating. The Pali Canon contains thousands of suttas—where do you even start? Traditional study requires navigating dense commentaries, while modern meditation apps often present "mindfulness lite" disconnected from its philosophical foundations.
We saw an opportunity to bridge ancient wisdom and modern technology. By combining scholarly translations with AI-powered conversation and vector search, we could create a teacher that's both authoritative and accessible—one that answers your specific questions with citations, remembers your journey, and adapts to your level. BuddhaUR makes authentic Buddhist education available to everyone, everywhere, in the most natural format possible: conversation.
How it works
RAG-Powered Teaching: When you ask a question, BuddhaUR converts it to a semantic embedding and searches a vector database containing thousands of chunks from the Pali Canon. The top 5 most relevant passages are retrieved and provided as context to the AI teacher, who then crafts a response using only these authentic sources. Every claim includes in-text citations (e.g., [1], [2]) that link to the original suttas on SuttaCentral.
Personalized Memory: The app maintains a memory system that tracks your profile, preferences, interests, challenges, and learning history. When relevant, these memories surface automatically in conversations, creating a truly personalized teaching experience that builds on your past interactions.
Comprehensive Practice Ecosystem: Beyond chat, BuddhaUR offers structured lessons on 16 core Buddhist topics, meditation-specific guidance, a beautiful timer with session tracking, topic-based quizzes, and adaptive practice that targets your knowledge gaps. Daily practice tracking and streak gamification help build consistent habits.
Smart Subscription Model: The free tier includes 1 lesson chat, 1 quiz, and 5 free-form questions per day, plus unlimited meditation. Premium unlimited removes all limits for unrestricted learning.
Feature highlights
- Conversational AI Buddhist Teacher trained on authentic early Buddhist suttas (Pali Canon translations by Bhikkhu Sujato)
- RAG-Powered Citations - Every teaching grounded in real sources with clickable citations to original texts
- 16 Structured Lesson Topics covering Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, meditation, ethics, karma, and more
- Meditation Timer with presets, custom durations, gong/vibration alerts, and session notes
- 9 Meditation Lessons covering samatha, vipassana, metta, jhanas, and daily practice
- Practice Quizzes & Adaptive Learning with topic-based tests and AI-powered question selection
- Personal Memory System that remembers your journey, preferences, and challenges
- Story Mode for Dhamma stories and parables drawn from the suttas
- Daily Practice Streaks tracking meditation, lessons, and quiz activity with achievements
- Conversation History to review and resume past discussions
- Beautiful, Calm Design with warm earth tones and generous whitespace
- Free Tier + Premium Unlimited subscription model via RevenueCat/App Store
Notes
- Current Status: Beta testing on iOS (Build 29). Android planned post-launch.
- Tech Stack: React Native (Expo), Node.js/Express, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, OpenAI GPT-4o-mini
- Knowledge Base: Thousands of sutta chunks from the Digha, Majjhima, Saṃyutta, and Aṅguttara Nikayas, plus numbered framework documents
- For Whom: Complete beginners, daily meditators, experienced practitioners, Dharma students, and anyone curious about Buddhism
- Philosophy: Authentic scholarship meets accessible conversation. Honor the tradition, embrace the technology.