Every Nexus Pen ships with an AI assistant named Donna. She's the intelligence behind the pen — the voice that answers your questions, the tutor that explains concepts, the creative partner that helps you think. This guide tells you everything you need to know about who Donna is, what she can do, and how to get the most from her.
Who Is Donna?
Donna is Nexus Pen's purpose-built AI assistant. She is powered by advanced large language models running on Nexus Pen's cloud backend, connected to your pen via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Her name is not random — it was chosen to give the AI a clear, human identity that is easy to address naturally: "Hey Donna," "Donna, explain this," "Donna, quiz me."
Unlike general-purpose AI assistants built for phones or smart speakers, Donna is optimized specifically for pen-in-hand contexts: note-taking, studying, writing, reading, and professional work. Her responses are calibrated to be heard through a small speaker and read on a 1.3-inch OLED display — brief, precise, and actionable.
Donna's Five Modes
Donna doesn't operate in a single mode. She has five purpose-built configurations that change how she processes and responds to your questions. Selecting the right mode before a session is the single most important thing you can do to maximize her usefulness.
Study Mode
Study Mode activates Donna's pedagogical framework. Rather than simply answering questions, she uses Socratic techniques — asking follow-up questions, checking your understanding, providing explanations at the right depth for active learning. Use this mode when you're working through course material, reviewing notes, or preparing for exams. Donna in Study Mode is less like a search engine and more like a patient tutor sitting next to you.
Creative Mode
In Creative Mode, Donna shifts into generative thinking. She offers alternatives, suggests connections, and approaches your prompts with a looser, more expansive interpretive lens. Ask for synonyms and she gives you five options with subtle tonal differences. Ask for plot help and she offers angles you hadn't considered. This is Donna as a writing partner — useful without being prescriptive.
Professional Mode
Professional Mode tightens Donna's output into business-appropriate, concise answers. Technical jargon is used correctly. Context is assumed to be professional. Responses avoid conversational filler and deliver clean, usable information. This is the mode for meetings, client calls, preparation sessions, and any context where you need Donna to sound like a well-briefed colleague.
Focus Mode
Focus Mode is Donna at her most minimal. Responses are stripped to their essential information. No elaboration. No background context unless requested. This mode is designed for deep work sessions where every additional word is a cost. If you find Donna's standard responses pulling your attention away from your work, Focus Mode fixes that.
Quick Mode
Quick Mode is for single-shot lookups. Definition of a word. Conversion of a unit. Name of a historical figure. Date of an event. Donna gives you one clear sentence and stops. Fast, frictionless, and done.
Donna's Voice Commands
Beyond answering questions, Donna responds to a set of direct voice commands that control her behavior without requiring a menu or button sequence:
- "Donna mute" — Silences speaker output; responses show on the OLED display only
- "Donna max volume" — Raises speaker to maximum level
- "Donna raise volume" — Increases volume by one step
- "Donna lower volume" — Decreases volume by one step
These voice commands are detected by Nexus Pen's backend before the AI response is generated, so they execute in under a second — faster than any physical button sequence.
The OLED Display: Donna's Visual Channel
Donna communicates through two channels simultaneously: the speaker and the 1.3-inch OLED display on the pen body. The display shows a scrolling text version of her response — useful in situations where speaker audio isn't appropriate, and helpful for catching technical terms, names, or numbers that are easier to read than hear.
The display also shows Donna's status: whether she is listening, processing, or ready for the next question. This visual feedback eliminates the uncertainty of not knowing whether the pen has registered your button press.
How Donna Gets Smarter Over Time
Donna's underlying models improve through Nexus Pen's cloud infrastructure. When the team deploys a new model version or refines Donna's system prompts, the improvement reaches your pen automatically through the app — no firmware update required. The pen you buy today is not the ceiling of what Donna can do.
Donna's Easter Egg
There's a hidden developer mode in Nexus Pen — activated by a specific button sequence known only to those who find it. We won't spoil it here. But if you're curious and persistent, Donna has something to say to you.
Ready to meet Donna in person? She comes with every Nexus Pen.
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