Help Center
Everything you can do on zQinta — and exactly how to do it.
🚀Getting started
zQinta has two halves that work together: the website (the Market, Forum, Blog, and your account) and the native Mac app, where AI builds knowledge trees you learn from, expand, and can publish as courses. Pick the path that fits you:
“I just want to learn”
Browse the Market and buy courses as a guest — pay with Stripe, we create your account and email you a link to set a password. Import what you buy into the free Mac app.
“I want to explore topics”
Create a free account and download the Mac app — the free plan includes AI generation, per-concept chat, quizzes, and Books. Signup adds a payment method so you can buy later, but the free plan itself is never charged.
“I want to sell courses”
Get Premium ($9.99/mo), connect your Stripe account, and publish knowledge trees as paid courses. You keep 70% of every sale.
The Mac app runs on macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later, Apple Silicon or Intel, and updates itself automatically. Download it here.
🌳Knowledge trees (Mac app)
Start with any topic — “Neural Networks”, “The French Revolution”, “Music Theory” — and the AI generates a visual tree of connected concepts. Every node is a sub-topic you can keep expanding, building a complete map of the subject.
- 1Create a new board and type a topic (or use voice input).
- 2The AI generates the first branches. Open the palette — the round palette button at the bottom-right of the canvas — and choose an expansion level: Beginner (3–5 clear sub-concepts), Intermediate (5–8), or Advanced (8–20, expert-level).
- 3Open any concept to read its explanation, then go deeper: chat scoped to that concept, quiz yourself with a self-check, or expand further.
- 4Select any sentence in an explanation and expand from that exact quote — the AI branches from the specific idea you picked.
- 5Keep private notes on concepts (never sent to the AI), edit / rename / merge / delete anything, and let the AI pick icons for concepts.
Free-plan limits: unlimited maps, 20 levels deep, 500 concepts per map, 20 chat messages per concept, 30 quote expansions per map. Premium lifts the rest (200 levels, 2,000 concepts, unlimited chat and quote expansions).
Looking for something in your workspace? Free search covers concept titles; Premium unlocks full-content search — any word inside any concept body, across all your maps.
🔑AI providers & API keys
You never need an AI key to use zQinta — but you can bring stronger models.
- ✓Bring your own key (BYOK):add your OpenAI key in Settings → AI Provider — it powers every generation (text, video, audio). Keys live in your Mac's Keychain — we never see them, and your prompts go directly to the provider.
- ✓Video generation: generate a finished video tutorial with synchronized narration from any concept (Sora, via your own OpenAI key). Videos render under the concept and can be published inside courses.
Duration limit:the current model generates short clips — 4, 8, or 12 seconds per generation (that's the maximum the API accepts). If the narration runs slightly past the clip, the video gracefully holds its final frame until the voice finishes — it is never cut off mid-sentence. We will support longer videos as soon as OpenAI's model is compatible. If OpenAI's moderation queue transiently blocks a generation, the app automatically retries it (backoff + one fresh re-generation) before surfacing any error. - ✓Your style, your language:5 response styles (short, detailed, many examples, “explain like I'm 5”, deep-professional) and 27 languages + Auto. Concepts can be generated in ANY language — the whole tree builds in whichever you pick.
- ✓Books grow your tree: attach a Knowledge Book when creating a board (Teach-me picker), then just ask. Questions outside the current concept but inside the book are answered AND turned into a new child concept automatically — you navigate there instantly with the answer inside.
- ✓Quote to Expand: select any passage in an explanation, copy it (⌘C), and tap “Expand from Quote” — the AI turns that exact passage into a new concept with its own explanation, video, and audio. Go deeper on precisely the part you care about (3 per map on Free, unlimited on Premium).
Privacy: boards live locally on your Mac. No analytics on your content, nothing sold. See the
privacy policy.
📚Knowledge Books & Teach Me
Upload a book or document and zQinta reads it — really reads it: every chunk is embedded into a vector database, so the AI answers from the actual text (retrieval-augmented), not from general knowledge.
- 1Pay the one-time $2.99 hosting fee (covers storage + embeddings), then upload your document.
- 2Use Teach Me: the AI builds an interactive knowledge tree from the book's own content.
- 3Chat with the book — ask what a chapter claimed, how two ideas connect, or for a summary. Your upload includes 2,000 queries; add 1,000 priority queries anytime for $0.99.
- 4Share the book with readers via keys. Book queries are metered fairly: your upload includes 2,000 owner queries, a reader pool you fund adds 5,000 ($5), 20,000 ($20), or 50,000 ($50) shared queries, and readers can add their own pack ($0.99 / 1,000 queries). The answer itself is generated on each reader's OpenAI key (Settings → AI Provider) — AI usage is billed by OpenAI, not by zQinta.
🛒Buying courses
- 1Browse the Market — filter by category and price. Every course page shows the full course-contents tree, the intro video, the AI-written overview, and buyer ratings.
- 2Not ready yet? Save it to your wishlist (Saved) or add several courses to the cart and check out once.
- 3Pay securely with Stripe — card checkout works for guests too; we create your account and email a password link.
- 4Import into the Mac app with one click from My Downloads (or redeem the license key there). The full board — concepts, videos, audio — lands in your workspace. No AI keys needed to learn.
- 5After buying, leave a star rating and review so quality surfaces for everyone. Courses you buy are yours to keep, forever.
Don't see the topic you want? Open the Market's “Suggest a topic” panel — no account required — and creators will build the most-upvoted requests.
🎓Live classes
Many courses come with live group lessons— a scheduled video call with the author and the other students, one per core topic. It's the difference between buying a course and joining a class.
- 1Spot a class course on the Market: cards with an upcoming class show a green “🎟️ Live class · in 3h” chip, and a blinking green dot while a lesson is running right now.
- 2Course buyers attend every class free — press Enroll to Class on the card or in My Downloads. Haven't bought the course? The same button opens the lesson list where you can buy tickets for just the lessons you want (tick the checkboxes — each lesson shows its price and time).
- 3RSVP“I'll be there” so the author and other students know who's coming. Everyone enrolled sees the headcount and names.
- 4You get a bell reminder + email 15 minutes beforeeach lesson you RSVP'd to. From that moment the Join the call button appears — it opens a FaceTime call (chat included, no extra apps needed on Mac/iPhone).
- 5Ticket refunds: a lesson ticket is refundable only before the lesson starts — once start time passes, the ticket is non-refundable, whether you attended or not.
- 6Your tickets live in My Downloads → My tickets — lesson times, your RSVPs, the join button, and suggestions for the next lessons. Course authors manage their schedule from their shop page (add, reschedule, cancel, or end a running lesson).
Lessons already started can't be bought — the card always sells the next ones. Tickets are per lesson; the course itself always includes every class for free.
✦MCP — AI course finder
zQinta publishes an MCP server (Model Context Protocol) — install it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor and your AI can search the zQinta catalog for you. Say “I want to learn calculus” in your normal chat and your AI recommends courses with prices, formats, and ratings — search is meaning-based, so no need to phrase things like a course title — and it can also surface consultant-reviewed topics from our Blog. Each result is one link to the course page on the web, where you buy the course (checkout with Stripe). Free for everyone(no account, no API key): it's how your AI becomes a course shopper.
- 1Open the MCP install guide and copy the server URL:
https://www.zqinta.com/mcp. - 2Paste it into your AI client (ChatGPT Connectors, claude.ai connectors, Cursor — or the mcp-remote snippet for Claude Desktop; exact steps + codes are on the guide page).
- 3Ask naturally: “teach me watercolor basics”. Result links open the course page — buy there with Stripe.
The MCP tools are read-only catalog search — anonymous, no account, and they never see your zQinta data. Detail: three tools — search_courses(meaning-based: word order and phrasing don't need to match course titles), get_course_detail, and search_consultations (topics a human consultant has reviewed, with a link to each published review). Every result comes as one link to the course page, where the course is purchased — all Market courses are paid.
💼Publishing & selling
Selling requires Premium (selling is the premium feature — buying is free). The flow: build a knowledge tree with AI, generate video, audio narration, and/or polished text, publish.
- 1In the Mac app, curate which concepts to include in the course and let the AI write the overview; generate videos (Sora, your OpenAI key) where they help.
- 2Click Start Selling (header → Start Selling, or Publish) and connect your Stripe account for payouts.
- 3Set your price ($1–$99) and formats — video course, audio narration, text guide, or any mix of the three. Media streams from the cloud; buyers import with one click.
- 4Course goes through a quick moderation/approval pass, then appears on the Market and on your public creator profile with your ratings.
You keep 70% of every sale (30% platform fee); Stripe Connect pays out to your bank. Track everything in Account.
⭐Human consultant reviews
AI-generated knowledge is powerful — and worth checking. For a flat $7.99 you can submit any AI-generated concept to a human consultant: a domain expert who reads it and publishes a written review — what holds up, what's subtly wrong, what an expert would add — right next to the concept, with its own discussion thread.
- ✓Every published review also appears as an essay on the Blog.
- ✓No consultant available for your topic? The request is declined and auto-refunded — you never pay for nothing.
- ✓Are you an expert? Become a consultant from your profile, list your profession and domains, and earn per review.
- ✓Forum: learners and creators discuss topics and help each other. Start a topic, reply, and get live notifications when someone answers you. Search covers reply bodies too.
- ✓Blog: every concept that went through a human consultant review, readable as expert essays on AI-generated knowledge.
- ✓Profiles: every creator and consultant has a public page with their courses, reviews, and ratings.
- ✓Suggested topics:upvote what you want to learn on the Market — the most-wanted list is a builder's to-do list.
💳Plans & billing
Two plans: Free ($0 forever) — learn, buy, chat with AI, read Books; and Premium ($9.99/mo or $99.99/yr) — everything unlimited plus selling, exports, full-content search, and sync. Full comparison on the pricing table.
- ✓Cancel anytime — from the app's Subscription tab. Canceling keeps Premium until the end of the period you paid for, then drops to Free. Change your mind? The Resume subscription button restores it instantly.
- ✓Payment failed? Premium stays on for a short grace period while you update your card (the app shows an “Update payment method” banner). Manage cards in the Stripe customer portal, linked from Account.
- ✓Nothing is deleted on downgrade: your maps, concepts, notes, and purchased courses all stay — you just return to Free-plan limits.
- ✓Course refunds: 7 days if a course materially mismatches its description, is broken, or you were double-charged — refund policy. Subscriptions have their own fair rules (including unintended trial conversions).
👤Account & security
- ✓Passwords & reset: reset via email at any time from the login page. The Mac app and the site share one account.
- ✓Secret question (Account → Security): set one and support can verify you instantly in live chat — it proves the account is really yours.
- ✓Board lock: lock any knowledge map behind Touch ID or your password — it auto-locks again after 30 minutes of inactivity or when your Mac sleeps.
- ✓Your data, portable: export everything about your account (profile, posts, boards JSON) from Account — GDPR-style, no questions asked.
- ✓Delete account:from the app's Subscription tab or the user menu. Cancels the subscription, wipes your profile/maps/posts from our servers, signs you out everywhere. Permanent — we ask you to confirm.
🛡️Security & trust
Every file on the zQinta Market passes multi-layer security scanning before it can be published — strict file-verification (uploads must be exactly the media type they claim to be), antivirus scanning, and a human moderation queue. Anything that fails is rejected automatically and never reaches the Market.
- ✓Payments run on Stripe — card numbers never touch zQinta. We only store a reference to your Stripe customer record.
- ✓Your AI keys stay in your Mac's Keychain — prompts go directly from your app to the AI provider, never through our servers.
- ✓Your boards live on your Mac — sync (if you enable it) runs through your own private iCloud database.
- ✓No tracking cookies or ad networks — the site sets no cookies at all, and sign-in uses rotating encrypted tokens on your device.
- ✓Your data, your call— export everything as JSON or delete your account permanently anytime (Settings → Privacy & Data in the app, Account → Danger Zone on the site).
Details: see the Privacy Policy, Terms and Refund Policy.
🆘Getting help
- 1Click the chat button at the bottom-right of any page. Give an email, verify with your secret question if you have one, and chat live with the team — attach screenshots or PDFs.
- 2When the chat ends, the full transcript is emailed to you and you can rate the experience.
- 3Prefer email? support@zqinta.com or the contact page.
Tip: the “Last visited” row above the footer keeps your last 5 pages handy while you browse — use it to jump back to a course you were comparing.
🔧Troubleshooting
Where is my license key / purchased course?
My Downloads lists every purchase with its license key and an Import button. The course stays yours forever, even if you uninstall and reinstall the app.
Import failed or media won't play
Try importing again from My Downloads (one click, no keys needed). If a course is genuinely broken, you're covered by the 7-day refund — open the support chat.
AI generation isn't working
Check your OpenAI key in Settings → AI Provider (it lives in your Keychain). Video and audio generation also use your OpenAI key.
“The AI service is busy” error
This mainly means your credits need attention: refresh your OpenAI billing (the key's usage limit may have reset, or a payment method failed), or buy new credits. It can also appear during genuine provider overload — retry after a minute.
The app didn't update
zQinta auto-updates via Sparkle. Restart the app if needed; the latest build is always at the same download link.
I was charged for something unexpected
Open the support chat with the email you paid with — double charges and unintended trial conversions are refunded under the refund policy.
Subscription questions
See Plans & billing above: cancel keeps Premium through the paid period, Resume restores it, and failed payments get a grace period to fix the card.
Still stuck?
Our team answers every message — usually in the live chat, bottom-right.
