How PuranGPT works — and the work behind it
You're trusting us with sacred texts, so you deserve to see under the hood. Here is — in plain words — what we've gathered, how an answer is actually built, and what we're still honest about. No mystique, just the work.
How every answer is grounded
Five steps stand between your question and the reply you read.
Curate the source
We start from the original texts — Puranas, the epics, Upanishads, and yogic darshanas — and tag each with its tradition and edition so you always know what you're reading.
Split into passages
Each text is broken into verse-level passages so a citation can point you to the exact line, not a vague chapter.
Embed it locally
Every passage is turned into a 384-dimension vector with an on-our-own-hardware model (all-MiniLM-L6-v2). Running embeddings ourselves keeps reading free and removes any per-query cost to you.
Retrieve before answering
When you ask something, we search those vectors (pgvector) for the passages that truly match — so the answer is built from real verses, not memory.
Answer with citations
The model writes its reply grounded in the retrieved passages and attaches each one as a citation you can tap open and read in full.
Cited, not paraphrased
General-purpose assistants answer scripture from training memory, so they tend to paraphrase and rarely point to an exact, openable verse. PuranGPT retrieves the source first, then answers.
Same question · two systems
Krishna tells Arjuna that one has a right to action alone, never to its fruits1and counsels performing one's duty established in yoga, abandoning attachment to outcomes2
You have a right to your duty, but never to the fruits of action.
Established in yoga, perform your duty… evenness of mind is called yoga.
The Bhagavad Gita teaches that you should focus on your actions and not be attached to the results — often summarized as “do your duty without expecting rewards.”
Comparison reflects how general-purpose assistants typically handle niche scriptural sources without retrieval grounding. Individual results vary by model and prompt.
Why we cite — every time
These texts have been carried faithfully for millennia. The least we can do is point back to them precisely. A citation you can open is a promise: don't take our word for it — read the verse yourself. That's the difference between an answer you have to trust blindly and one you can verify in seconds.
What we're honest about
Translations are interpretations
Where we show a rendering in English, it is one scholar's reading. We always link the source so you can weigh it for yourself.
The library keeps growing
Indexing is ongoing. Some texts are richer than others today, and we're steadily adding and deepening coverage.
AI can still get things wrong
Grounding sharply reduces invented citations, but no model is perfect. The open source link is there precisely so you can check.
See it for yourself
Every verse is free and open to read. No account needed.