Making Classical Knowledge Questionable: A Preview of the Totenroku 1.9 Cultural Study Assistant
Totenroku 1.9 introduces a preview of its Cultural Study Assistant, an attempt to explain the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches (干支), the structure of the I Ching, and Five Elements theory through natural conversation—along with my reflections on AI, privacy, and cultural tools.
While building Totenroku, I’ve had a problem that has never been easy to solve.
I can draw star charts. I can calculate the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches (干支). I can catalogue every hexagram of the I Ching into a database. But when someone encounters these concepts for the first time—seeing terms like the Twenty-Eight Mansions (二十八宿), the Sixty-Four Hexagrams (六十四卦), or the cycles of Five Elements generation and restraint (五行生剋)—they often still find themselves standing at the gate, unable to enter.
Data is not the same as understanding.
My previous approach was to add more explanatory pages to the app. But no matter how complete those pages were, they could never address everyone’s individual questions. Some people want to know why the current time period corresponds to a particular Stem and Branch. Others look at a saved entry and want to probe the cultural background behind that moment. Still others are simply curious about an unfamiliar term and don’t want to read an entire chapter of a textbook first.
So in version 1.9, I’ve added the first preview of the Cultural Study Assistant (文化研習助手).
Not About Reaching Conclusions for You, but About Helping You Ask Better Questions
My initial requirement for this assistant was not that it could “answer everything,” but that it knew where it should stand.
Its main role is to explain the classical concepts that appear in Totenroku through natural conversation: how the Stems and Branches record time, what the structure of hexagrams (卦) and lines (爻) in the I Ching looks like, and how Five Elements theory forms an interconnected system of classification. These topics are well suited for learning, reference, and reflection—not for predicting a definitive future on the user’s behalf.
This boundary matters a great deal to me.
What makes classical knowledge interesting is precisely that it preserves the ways ancient people observed time, nature, and human affairs. Compressing it into a single statement of fortune or misfortune would only strip away what is genuinely worth understanding.
Making a Single Record the Starting Point for Inquiry
Another experiment in version 1.9 is letting users attach a saved record to the conversation.
Previously, a diary entry would automatically carry the Stem and Branch of the time period and the lunar mansion (月宿) that were in effect. It was like a time specimen, faithfully recording the astronomical and calendrical context of a given moment. Now, that specimen can also serve as the context for questions: you can ask the assistant to explain the concepts that appear in it, and learn about their cultural and historical meanings.
I really like this interaction. It doesn’t open a blank chat box and leave you wondering what to ask. Instead, it starts from a day you actually recorded, and gradually expands outward.
A personal record thus connects with a way of understanding time from two thousand years ago.
How Close Should AI Get to Private Memories?
Putting AI into a diary app means privacy is a question that cannot be avoided.
So on supported devices, the Cultural Study Assistant can run locally through Apple Intelligence. Your data doesn’t need to leave your device to generate answers. If users prefer to use a different model, they can also switch to the cloud-based TotenrokuAI themselves.
I don’t want to make the same choice for everyone. The on-device model stays closer to private data and feels more reassuring; the cloud model may offer different capabilities. Putting the choice clearly back in the user’s hands is more honest than pretending there’s no difference between the two.
This Is Only the First Step Before 2.0
1.9 is not the final form of the Cultural Study Assistant. It’s more like opening a door first, to see what kinds of questions people bring with them when they walk through.
Whether the rhythm of conversation feels natural, how deep the explanations should go, which concepts are most prone to misunderstanding, and how much background a personal record actually needs to be properly explained—these are questions that are hard to answer by a developer sitting alone in front of a screen.
That’s why I’ve released it as a preview in 1.9, and I hope to refine the full experience in 2.0 based on feedback from real usage.
From star charts to diaries, and from diaries to a cultural context that can be questioned, Totenroku seems to have moved a little closer to its original vision: not merely displaying the ancient sky, but giving people today a path back into that sky.