A Particle Story is generated when at least 3 different articles are published from at least 2 different publishers, about the same story. Particle does not display summaries from individual articles.

Summary styles let you read a story in a specific way. If a story is feeling particularly complex, choose the Explain Like I’m 5 style! You can select between the following summary styles, and change your preferred Summary Style if you’d like.

This is the default style—a bullet point list of the key information you need to know about the story.

This style pulls two different viewpoints from the story and explains their respective points of view.

A classic—the who, what, where, when, and why of a story, keeping it to the most important details.

This style simplifies the language and explains the story in a straightforward way. It’s super useful for complex topics like quantum physics, or Supreme Court cases (the Court did not uphold the stay on the ban… so wait… what happened?)

Get the bullet point overview in a different language, and choose between three language levels: Beginner and Advanced.

In Particle, you can follow anything. Tap a highlighted word to find out more about it, including some background information from Wikipedia, how it relates to the story you are reading, related stories, and more.

Tap on the "Follow" button and it will show up in your feed when there’s any news around it. Tap the Bell to get a push notification whenever it’s in the news as well.

You can also follow Authors and Publishers on Particle, find out more here.

Tap on the 3 dots at the top right of any story, and the "Topics", to see the topics that have been associated with a story, with the most related topics appearing highest. Use this screen to fine-tune the topics you'd like to see on Particle. More tips about content preferences are available here.

Every story includes a list of articles about that story. The [ ] symbol indicates that you can read the article directly within Particle, with no ads. If you follow a particular journalist or publisher, they will show up higher in this list if their article is part of the story.

You can also sort this list by reading time, recency (how long ago it was published), or by political leaning.

We believe that not only is the content of a story important, but how it’s being covered can be critical to understanding it.

For stories about politics, you’ll see a line of small, colorful bubbles below the image header.

Each bubble on the line represents the publisher of an article, mapped on the American political spectrum. You can tap on the line, or choose “Political Spectrum” sort in the Articles list, to see more detail about how the story is being covered from different sides of the aisle.

In the larger view, each publisher icon is placed within their political leaning designation. The size of the icon corresponds to the length of the article, and the vertical positioning corresponds to how recently the article was published (more recent publishing times appear lower, and older publishing times appear higher). In order to fit the icons in, these placements and sizes are directional, and they do not correspond to exact publish or reading times.

Particle’s political spectrum designations are determined through the aggregation of designations from the following non-partisan organizations, and are updated periodically:

All Sides

Ad Fontes Media

Media Bias / Fact Check

Political spectrum placement is determined at the publisher level, not for individual articles or journalists. Particle does not use AI nor employee opinions to identify the political leaning of a publisher.

Below the spectrum, Particle will explain differences in framing, if any, between left, center, and right leaning publishers. Below that, you can directly compare the headlines of the articles about the story, separated by political leaning.

Particle also uses these designations to identify when a story appears to have one-sided coverage.

The Quotes section highlights key statements and remarks from the people directly involved in a news story. It offers access to primary source material, whether it’s comments from politicians, business leaders, eyewitnesses, or experts. This feature helps you cut through commentary and get straight to the voices that matter.

Each publisher and author has a dedicated space in Particle.

Find an Author Page by searching for their name (Tap “Authors” to filter), and tapping on the result. You can also get to an author page by tapping on their name when you see them listed in Articles.

On the author page, you can see an their list of articles (tap one to go directly to the article), what they write about, who they write for, and which Particle stories include information sourced from their content.

From an Author page, you can also follow them by tapping “Follow” at the top, and the bell icon to get a push notification whenever they publish.

When a story includes information sourced from an article by an Author you follow, a checkmark will appear beside their name in the Article Carousel, and they will be ranked higher in the carousel as well.

Find a Publisher Page by searching for their name (Tap “Publishers” to filter), and tapping on the result. You can also get to a publisher page by tapping on their name when you see them listed in Articles.

On the publisher page, you can see their list of articles (tap one to go directly to the article), who writes for them, and which Particle stories include information sourced from their content.

From this page, you can also follow them by tapping “Follow” at the top, and the bell icon to get a push notification whenever they publish.

When a story includes information sourced from from an article by a Publisher you follow, a checkmark will appear beside their name in the Article Carousel, and they will be ranked higher in the carousel as well.

The Links section gathers popular links referenced in articles related to the story. For example, you might find a link to the official complaint in a lawsuit, the full text of proposed legislation, or the Instagram post where an artist announced a new album. These links offer deeper insight but aren’t used to generate the story itself.

If you spot a link that seems out of place, let us know!

Particle acts as your personal researcher—if you have a question about a story, just ask! If you’re looking for inspiration, Particle also suggests questions to help spark your curiosity. For more details, check out our guidelines on asking questions here.

Particle will first respond with a fast answer, and then it will go through various steps to expand the answer, verify it against sources, and gather citations. If you leave before the answer has completed generating, and there is a material difference in the fast answer and the final one, you'll receive a push notification (if you have them enabled) that there's a more updated answer for you to check out.

Particle, whenever possible, will show citations and relevant excerpts to give confidence that the answer is correct.

As part of a Reality Check process, the provided answer can sometimes contain inconsistencies. If an inconsistency is detected, a section ("Is this answer accurate?") will appear with an explanation, underneath the answer.

Particle gathers stories that are related to the one you’re looking at, so that you can go further and learn more.

You’ll see labels on certain stories to help you contextualize them.

Stories are labeled as Popular as more users read them.

Using the designations from Particle’s Political Spectrum, a story is labeled as One-Sided when one of its primary topics is Politics, and there is an outsized ratio of coverage from the left (liberal) or the right (conservative).

Only stories with more than 5 articles are eligible to be labeled as One-Sided. Although AI helps Particle determine that a story is about politics, AI is not used to identify if a story is labeled as One-Sided.

Tap on Overview summary bullet points to see Supporting Material. Supporting Material Citations show excerpts from sources that prove that the generated claims are correct. You can see a generated explanation of the reasoning that the excerpt proves the claim.

At the top of the same sheet are a list of the People, Places, and Things that are important for the story. Tap on any of those to see more information about them and why they are important to the story.

Supporting Material is generated as part of the Reality Check process.