diff --git a/web/src/glossary.tsx b/web/src/glossary.tsx
index 5b40aad..645e7f0 100644
--- a/web/src/glossary.tsx
+++ b/web/src/glossary.tsx
@@ -1,7 +1,4 @@
-import { useState, useEffect } from "react";
-
-// temporary hack to get glossary working
-const GLOSSARY_JSON = {"chain of thought prompting":{"term":"chain of thought prompting","pageid":"8EL7","contents":"<p>Chain-of-thought prompting is a technique which makes a language model generate intermediate reasoning steps in its output.</p>\n"},"chain-of-thought":{"term":"chain-of-thought","pageid":"8EL7","contents":"<p>Chain-of-thought prompting is a technique which makes a language model generate intermediate reasoning steps in its output.</p>\n"},"goodhart's law":{"term":"goodhart's law","pageid":"8185","contents":"<p>Goodhart’s law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.</p>\n"},"the big g,":{"term":"the big g,","pageid":"8185","contents":"<p>Goodhart’s law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.</p>\n"},"terminal goals":{"term":"terminal goals","pageid":"","contents":"<p>Goals which are valued as ends in themselves, rather than as instrumental to something else.</p>\n"},"terminal goal":{"term":"terminal goal","pageid":"","contents":"<p>Goals which are valued as ends in themselves, rather than as instrumental to something else.</p>\n"},"orthogonality thesis":{"term":"orthogonality thesis","pageid":"6568","contents":"<p>The thesis that any level of intelligence is compatible with any terminal goals. This implies that intelligence alone is not enough to make a system moral.</p>\n"},"instrumental convergence":{"term":"instrumental convergence","pageid":"897I","contents":"<p>Instrumental convergence is the idea that different AI agents, each with distinct terminal goals, will end up adopting many of the same instrumental goals.</p>\n"},"instrumentally convergent goals":{"term":"instrumentally convergent goals","pageid":"897I","contents":"<p>Instrumental convergence is the idea that different AI agents, each with distinct terminal goals, will end up adopting many of the same instrumental goals.</p>\n"},"llm":{"term":"llm","pageid":"","contents":"<p>A large language model is an AI  model which has been trained on a large body of text, in order to produce texts in a human-like way.</p>\n"},"large language model":{"term":"large language model","pageid":"","contents":"<p>A large language model is an AI  model which has been trained on a large body of text, in order to produce texts in a human-like way.</p>\n"},"goal misgeneralization":{"term":"goal misgeneralization","pageid":"","contents":"<p>pursuing a different goal during deployment from the one that was pursued during training due to distribution shift</p>\n"},"interpretability":{"term":"interpretability","pageid":"8241","contents":"<p>Interpretability is an area of alignment research that aims to make machine learning systems easier for humans to understand.</p>\n"},"existential risk":{"term":"existential risk","pageid":"89LL","contents":"<p>risks that threaten the destruction of humanity's long-term potential, including human extinction</p>\n"}}
+import { createContext, useContext } from "react";
 
 type GlossaryItem = {
     term: string;
@@ -9,27 +6,26 @@ type GlossaryItem = {
     contents: string;
 };
 
+export type Glossary = Map<string, GlossaryItem>;
+
+export const GlossaryContext = createContext<{g: Glossary, r: RegExp} | null>(null);
+
 // A component which wraps a paragraph and injects glossary terms into it as
 // hoverable pop-up links. The text is immediately rendered normally, but after
 // the glossary is loaded (which happens once per page, asynchronously), the
 // glossary terms are replaced with elements.
 export const GlossaryP: React.FC<{content: string}> = ({content}) => {
-    const [glossary, setGlossary] = useState<Map<string, GlossaryItem> | null>(null);
-    const [glossaryRegex, setGlossaryRegex] = useState<RegExp | null>(null);
 
-    useEffect(() => {
-        if (glossary === null) {
-            const glossary = new Map(Object.entries(GLOSSARY_JSON));
-            setGlossary(glossary);
-            setGlossaryRegex(new RegExp(Array.from(glossary.keys()).join("|"), "gim"));
-        }
-    }, [glossary]);
+    const g = useContext(GlossaryContext);
 
     // If the glossary hasn't loaded yet, just render the text normally.
-    if (glossary == null || glossaryRegex == null) {
+    if (g == null) {
         return <span dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: content}} />;
     }
 
+    const glossary = g.g;
+    const glossaryRegex = g.r;
+
     // Otherwise, replace glossary terms with links. We can do this in
     // O(n * sum of term lengths) by finding String.prototype.indexOf of
     // each term in the glossary (since that'd probably be backed by KMP)
diff --git a/web/src/pages/_app.tsx b/web/src/pages/_app.tsx
index d280cbd..1935ffc 100644
--- a/web/src/pages/_app.tsx
+++ b/web/src/pages/_app.tsx
@@ -1,9 +1,47 @@
 import { type AppType } from "next/dist/shared/lib/utils";
+import { useEffect, useState } from "react";
 
 import "~/styles/globals.css";
 
+import { Glossary, GlossaryContext } from "../glossary";
+
 const MyApp: AppType = ({ Component, pageProps }) => {
-  return <Component {...pageProps} />;
+  const [glossary, setGlossary] = useState<{ g: Glossary, r: RegExp } | null>(null);
+
+  // fetch glossary and compile regex once on load
+  useEffect(() => {
+    if (glossary === null)
+      tempHackFetch("/questions/glossary")
+        .then((res) => res.json())
+        .then((data) => {
+          const glossary: Glossary = new Map(Object.entries(data));
+          const regex = new RegExp(Array.from(glossary.keys()).join("|"), "gim");
+          setGlossary({ g: glossary, r: regex });
+        });
+  }, []);
+
+  return (
+    <GlossaryContext.Provider value={glossary}>
+      <Component {...pageProps} />
+    </GlossaryContext.Provider>
+  );
 };
 
 export default MyApp;
+
+// ------------------- hack until server endpoint is working -------------------
+
+const GLOSSARY_JSON = {"chain of thought prompting":{"term":"chain of thought prompting","pageid":"8EL7","contents":"<p>Chain-of-thought prompting is a technique which makes a language model generate intermediate reasoning steps in its output.</p>\n"},"chain-of-thought":{"term":"chain-of-thought","pageid":"8EL7","contents":"<p>Chain-of-thought prompting is a technique which makes a language model generate intermediate reasoning steps in its output.</p>\n"},"goodhart's law":{"term":"goodhart's law","pageid":"8185","contents":"<p>Goodhart’s law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.</p>\n"},"the big g,":{"term":"the big g,","pageid":"8185","contents":"<p>Goodhart’s law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.</p>\n"},"terminal goals":{"term":"terminal goals","pageid":"","contents":"<p>Goals which are valued as ends in themselves, rather than as instrumental to something else.</p>\n"},"terminal goal":{"term":"terminal goal","pageid":"","contents":"<p>Goals which are valued as ends in themselves, rather than as instrumental to something else.</p>\n"},"orthogonality thesis":{"term":"orthogonality thesis","pageid":"6568","contents":"<p>The thesis that any level of intelligence is compatible with any terminal goals. This implies that intelligence alone is not enough to make a system moral.</p>\n"},"instrumental convergence":{"term":"instrumental convergence","pageid":"897I","contents":"<p>Instrumental convergence is the idea that different AI agents, each with distinct terminal goals, will end up adopting many of the same instrumental goals.</p>\n"},"instrumentally convergent goals":{"term":"instrumentally convergent goals","pageid":"897I","contents":"<p>Instrumental convergence is the idea that different AI agents, each with distinct terminal goals, will end up adopting many of the same instrumental goals.</p>\n"},"llm":{"term":"llm","pageid":"","contents":"<p>A large language model is an AI  model which has been trained on a large body of text, in order to produce texts in a human-like way.</p>\n"},"large language model":{"term":"large language model","pageid":"","contents":"<p>A large language model is an AI  model which has been trained on a large body of text, in order to produce texts in a human-like way.</p>\n"},"goal misgeneralization":{"term":"goal misgeneralization","pageid":"","contents":"<p>pursuing a different goal during deployment from the one that was pursued during training due to distribution shift</p>\n"},"interpretability":{"term":"interpretability","pageid":"8241","contents":"<p>Interpretability is an area of alignment research that aims to make machine learning systems easier for humans to understand.</p>\n"},"existential risk":{"term":"existential risk","pageid":"89LL","contents":"<p>risks that threaten the destruction of humanity's long-term potential, including human extinction</p>\n"}}
+
+const tempHackFetch = (_url: string) => {
+  return new Promise<Response>((resolve, _reject) => {
+    setTimeout(() => {
+      resolve({
+        ok: true,
+        json: () => Promise.resolve(GLOSSARY_JSON),
+      } as unknown as Response);
+    }, 1000);
+  });
+}
+  
+
diff --git a/web/src/pages/index.tsx b/web/src/pages/index.tsx
index a268d9f..27fdcf4 100644
--- a/web/src/pages/index.tsx
+++ b/web/src/pages/index.tsx
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ import Image from 'next/image';
 import Header from "../header";
 import { SearchBox, Followup } from "../searchbox";
 import logo from "../logo.svg"
-import { GlossaryP } from "~/glossary";
+import { GlossaryP } from "../glossary";
 
 type Citation = {
     title: string;