
Show HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool - mvind
https://memordo.com
======
emmanueloga_
Theory / 2 Cents: don't just work on a GUI for spaced repetition cards, invent
an open file format for spaced repetition (perhaps an XML plus an schema, or a
JSON based file format, a subset of HTML or markdown, etc...).

The idea is that you create a file format spec, perhaps even some open source
libraries to operate on the file format. And then you sell a really nice GUI
for editing that (perhaps a web page, perhaps a mobile app, perhaps both?).

If your format is good people will use it, perhaps create new editors for it:
if you have competition on GUIs it means you succeeded :-). Some people may be
willing to pay for a hosted version or an app, others will likely host it
themselves, I'm sure people would donate to you, the main developer if that
was the case.

~~~
tasogare
I created a file format designed for sharing data in-between language learning
apps (JSON based + signature). It’s not released yet but if someone is
interested please reply below. It would be great to have software other than
mine using it.

~~~
andreaorru
I'm definitely interested.

~~~
tasogare
Thanks for your interest! I'll edit the spec draft a little more, write a
quick big picture explanation and then send you an email.

------
mvind
Creator here. As a University student I was struggling a lot with the huge
amount of information I needed to remember for my courses. I started using
spaced repetition (Anki) and it worked great! I enthusiastically shared this
method with my family but they got overwhelmed by the complexity of the Anki
interface and all the options. I wanted to change that.

So I built memordo. I focused on creating a minimalist but still productive
interface for creating memory cards that supports image, latex, code and
clozes. I also built a chrome extension so you can add memory cards instantly
whether you are reading pdfs or wikipedia.

I learned so much coding, like rendering latex instantly in a chrome
extension, or the painful complexity of wysiwyg editors. I ended up using a
vue based framework called tiptap. It works as a wrapper on top of
prosemirror.
([https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap...](https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap...))

Anyways, I would love to hear what you guys think about this project!

~~~
vergessenmir
I've spent about 10 minutes kicking the tires so I may have missed things
which are actually there. These are my thoughts, excuse the roughness of it
all:

* Editing - Keyboard shortcuts for committing a card? Undo system in the editor would be useful. Contextual help for the icons on hover.

* Decks - Perhaps separate tab for this rather than the side panel being the only way to view them

* notifications - Avoid the alert pop up for notifications when the user does an unexpected action. Maybe the area under the CARD CREATOR title might be the place for it.

* navigation - there should be quick navigation to study or desk views always present. Having to click on the side panel, then click is a little inconvenient.

* New Cards - it's possible to get to the Card Creator without any decks created. If I want create a new deck for this card, I'd have stop editing and click the side panel. Surely typing a new deck name in the Deck form on the Card Creator would be less confusing?

You'll get two types of users coming to this app. Those who are familiar with
spaced repetition apps and those who aren't. I'd recommend spending time on
polishing the onboarding experience for noobie users. For the more experienced
user I would expect a few features if this was going to be a more modern anki-
lite, like a deck view organisable in a folder format or tags, or an undo
system for the editor.

Having an exportable format is extremely important for me personally. Might be
different for other people.

~~~
mvind
Hi. Thank you such much for your feedback! I have noted all of your valuable
points down. Thanks for taking the time!

------
rdslw
Please, do not use white lies on your web.

This is not free to use. This is useless on free. It's like tesla saying that
chargers are free to use on front page, then on pricing: but only first
0.1kWh.

this is dark pattern.

~~~
mvind
This is a valid point. What do you think would be respectable amount of free
cards? - or is having a card limit even the right way to of differentiate
between free and premium?

Very interested in hearing your points - i'm totally new to this.

~~~
rdslw
I appreciate you responding.

I would say 250+ and no more than 1000 should be more than enough. Usually
doing 20..40 new DAILY is a max if you are doing anything bigger.

I would allow users bigger db (1000..5000) but would limit to the moment they
will reveal (open) 250 new cards.

You want them to create habbit. This needs more than few weeks. Completly dont
worry about them using 200 or 500, if habbit do not kickin, they will leave
you no matter what you offer.

p.s. my experience come from doing 20k rep spacing english. It took me around
10 years of daily doing it.

p.p.s. I paid for my 20k english course, 15 USD. that was for the app,
complete 20k cards with phrases and VOICE audio. Mind it. 15 usd. Your tool
would cost 10yrs _12_ 5 whooping 6000 usd :)

~~~
mvind
Thanks for insight, i'll definitely use it! It is a valid point about your
English course but myself I don't use SRS for language learning I use it for
mathematics, cs, and economics, so that was why I implemented latex and
codeblocks. But I think some sort of predefined/shareable deck solution could
solve this problem.

------
hansitomani
I'm always curious on what type of feedback the author really is looking for
or if it is just cheap ad.

$5 for unlimited and basically 25 cards for 'free' makes it quite obvious that
this tool does not provide anything the market already offers.

Aren't people analysing what is already out there?

Anki/Ankiweb is free. What student will every pay $5/month for your service?
No one.

I assume that you will visit your subscription numbers, your page counts for a
few weeks, you will see no magic and sudden richness, and either you loos
interest or you discover that someone is misusing your server through some bug
and you shut it down.

I don't wanna be pessimistic, don't get me wrong, but i really want to know
what your mental idea was showing it here.

If you really wanna have feedback: \- Make it as simple and fast and easy to
create new cards/decks \- Add an IOS/Android App; Either native or PWA \- Fix
your unicode stuff , doesn't work everywhere just because it works on your pc
\- Actually teach people how to write proper cards; Your description, to be
honest, is as shitty avg as any other website

And as a final point: Actually think of something which is worth $5 per Month
and makes any difference to what the market already has to offer.

~~~
mvind
Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! This was a proof of concept of
the idea of creating cards through a chrome extension. There is still a lot of
crucial features missing, and I know that now. But from my experience Anki is
not an easy tool to use for non-technical users, so the aim for memordo is to
have the easability of quizlet but the functionality of anki.

~~~
DecayingOrganic
I take advantage of that complexity though. For example, I practice
intentional vocabulary acquisition by adding cards in my own custom note type
called 'Vocab.'

I installed AnkiConnect add-on which allows me to communicate with Anki over a
simple HTTP API and complimented it with a CLI tool which automatically
fetches the audio or whatever is needed to fill in the fields for the card and
adds it to Anki.

So all you have to do is open the terminal and write "add [word]". And the
magic happens:

1\. A card which the agent is prompted to pronounce the word, followed by the
correct pronunciation.

2\. A card which the agent is prompted to write down the word after hearing
the pronunciation.

3\. A card which requests a random example sentence featuring the word, served
by a local server.
([https://i.imgur.com/11E3IqE.png](https://i.imgur.com/11E3IqE.png))

The last card is the most helpful, it provides comprehensible input in the
form of unique sentences that uses that word, so you get acquainted with the
word's collocations, the context in which it is used and etc.

~~~
BossingAround
> I take advantage of that complexity though.

So do I. I suspect we're not the target users of the app then.

The target user is probably someone who'd write math equations as "a^2 + b^2 =
?" instead of learning how to use LaTeX in Anki.

------
rsanek
I think you'll need to offer something significantly better than what is
already available for free on other apps to really get traction. This space is
already pretty crowded --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flashcard_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flashcard_software)
\-- but I still think there's plenty of room to improve on what current
services offer.

Agree with the others that your pricing doesn't make sense. You want to get
users to the hook point of SRS. Very few people reach this point [0], and
having an arbitrary card limit will only make this worse. I would provide a
very generous free trial period that has all the features of the full version
-- perhaps something like 60-90 days. If someone is actually still using the
app at the end of the trial, they'll be really easy to convert because they
see the huge benefits. The reality is, the vast majority of your sign ups will
not reach that point, but a bigger proportion will if they don't have the
arbitrary card limit that prevents them from seeing the real value of SRS.

Best of luck to you!

[0] There's a blog post out there from an author of free SRS software that
laments how awful the conversion rates were because users just don't stick
with SRS, but I can't seem to find it.

------
JCharante
By minimalist I didn't realize you meant minimalist in features, just design.
Regardless I think everyone, not just power users, could benefit from a SRS,
but part of me thinks that the time investment that is required to get started
on Anki is what keeps people going when they're still in the early stages.
It's kinda like a buy-in.

Do you support exporting your cards into a csv format?

~~~
mvind
Thanks for your feedback, very valuable! I'm very much still at the early
stages of this project, I decided to go public to get feedback as soon as you
could add a card from the chrome extension and then study it.

There is no support for exporting cards, but I have noted it and will consider
it in the future. Thanks again for your comment!

------
istjohn
What I'd like is a system to let me browse, create and organize my "notes," to
use the Anki term of art, in a literate, flexible way. You could probably
build it on top of Anki using tags and/or data hidden in HTML, but I think it
would provide enough added value to justify paying for it.

Basically, I want WorkFlowy for Anki notes. I should be able to organize my
notes into hiearchical categories and browse them easily. Currently, it's
difficult to find the gaps in your Anki deck on a given topic unless you're
very careful and thorough with your tagging. And even then, only being able to
view one card at a time makes it hard to quickly scan through the cards under
a given tag.

~~~
mfranzs
This sounds very similar to
[https://www.remnote.io/](https://www.remnote.io/).

~~~
istjohn
Wow, that's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks for the tip.

Edit: I see that you're actually the creator. Thanks for making this!

------
gbourne
It is hard take an idea, spend the time to build, and make it live. Congrats
on doing this!

I'm not the target audience, so I can't comment on the value proposition. I'll
just point out a few things I noticed on the site:

\- The "Free" signup button brings you to the login and not register page.
Also the $5 pay link goes to login too. I used the $5 link and then clicked
register. Registered and was never asked for payment. \- On the register,
suggest not asking for username creation unless you really need it...just use
the email as the username. \- The step-though-guide last step has "next" and
doesn't do anything. Should be close. There are a few good step guide packages
out there you might want to consider. \- In the app, clicking "Upgrade" give a
500 error. \- If you try to create a card before creating a deck says need to
select a deck. People probably will first click on create card first, so
suggest have a default deck that you can select right away. \- Created a
single card and says I have 2 cards when studying. I think counting both sides
of the card.

------
stevieb89
For some reason I find the website really hard to read, maybe try something
like this? [https://imgur.com/a/cNWZosc](https://imgur.com/a/cNWZosc)

~~~
mvind
Thanks. I definitely have to iterate on the frontend design, I still have a
lot to learn. But I agree on your picture that I need to de-clutter the
frontpage. Thanks for your feedback!

------
lakesare
Have you tried the open-source SRS
[https://www.memcode.com](https://www.memcode.com) folks? With images &
formatting & SM2 spaced-repetition algorithm too.

------
huhtenberg
Good idea in principle, appears to be well executed, but this must not be a
service. Just because it can be made into one, it doesn't mean it should be.

No reason whatsoever why this can't be a locally hosted offline web app that
uses local storage for its state. I can see some people wanting to do their
exercises using several devices and for that an optional syncing service would
make sense, but adding a permanent online dependency for what is inherently an
offline app operating with local data makes zero sense. Even if it were free.

------
mindvirus
Awesome, I'm going to try it out. I really think there's a lot of room for
professional SRS tools.

A few things I've found using SRS.

\- I often want to practice on the go, but Anki's mobile offering isn't great
for inputting new cards, or managing partial cards (i.e. I think of a sentence
I don't know).

\- I have a couple modes of operation. When I'm studying I'm often at a
computer, so I want bulk input/output - i.e. create a lot of cards fast.

\- Offline support is essential, since my study time is usually during my
commute.

Anyway, congrats on launching!

------
DecayingOrganic
Just to let you know, clicking on "Features" or "Pricing" doesn't work if you
are not on the home page. It can't find the anchors which are located on the
home page.

~~~
mvind
Hey man thanks! still a lot of learning to be done on the frontend..

------
yewenjie
New SRS tools are great but I am yet to see anything that Anki and Polar
doesn't provide.

Rather than seeing half-baked closed source apps like this I would just prefer
more devs contributing to Anki.

------
alpaca128
Small nitpick: your main headline on the site has a typo in the word
'knowledge'.

That said it looks interesting, but for me personally the only big reason to
switch away from Anki would be more keyboard controls so I don't need to
switch to the mouse and back for some menu interactions. Then again syntax
highlighting in code blocks does sound like a neat feature for some
situations.

~~~
mvind
Thanks for your thoughts and very valuable nitpick (I have fixed it now). I
definitely agree that keyboard controls are very essential to the card making
process, and I will look into that!

~~~
ch0u5
Hi, nice work with this! Another small typo under the "Retain information with
Spaced Repetition" header in the first bullet point, effecient -> efficient.

~~~
mvind
Thanks for spotting the typo! I have fixed it now.

~~~
chungus
One more: 'A _breif_ title' on the /suggestions page.

~~~
mvind
Thank you! I have fixed it now :)

------
mkbkn
I applaud your efforts but you have to think of some other pricing model or
none at the moment.

------
s_gourichon
Hi. The "features" and "pricing" links no longer work after you click on
"Demos" or "What is Spaced Repetition?" links.

Also, it might make sense that the bar holding those links remains visible at
the top... or not.

~~~
mvind
Hi. Thanks for your valuable observation - I have fixed it now :-)

------
amelius
I made a tool like this when I was 11 years old, to help me with my homework.

(This was in the Apple ][ days)

------
ajawee
What is Spaced Repetition? Never heard of it.

~~~
gjm11
The very first non-navigation-bar text on the linked site says: "The Next
Generation Spaced Repetition Tool to help you Retain More Knowledge: Create
memory cards anywhere on the web", which should give some clues. A little
lower down there's a link saying "Click here to check out our 5 minute
introduction to spaced repetition", linking to ... a brief explanation of
spaced repetition and why you might want to use it.

Anyway. The idea is that when you learn something, you are likely to forget it
eventually, and that when you _remind_ yourself of something you've learned
that postpones the likely forgetting by an amount of time that increases
according to how long it was since you learned it. So if you want to learn
something and retain it, you should keep reminding yourself just before you
would have forgotten. Fortunately, it seems that for most of us the time we
remember a thing for is somewhat longer than the time between reminders, which
means that learning something this way doesn't take an unreasonable number of
reminders before it's lodged in your brain long-term.

So: a spaced repetition system is a thing that helps you learn. You give it a
bunch of things you want to learn; it tests you and remembers -- separately
for each individual thing -- when you were last tested and how you did. If its
algorithm matches your brain reasonably well, a fairly small investment of
effort can help you get a lot of stuff imported lastingly into your brain.

The most common use of these things is for learning foreign language
vocabulary, but of course that's by no means all you can do with them.

