[HN Gopher] Show HN: Flash Notes - Flashcards for Your Notes, LL...
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       Show HN: Flash Notes - Flashcards for Your Notes, LLM, iOS/macOS
       Sync
        
       The app started as my wishful thinking that flashcards should
       really be derived from notes. I've been constantly writing things
       down and wishing to remember them. However, I never could convince
       myself to populate a flashcard app with them. I really tried (Anki,
       Supermemo), but I guess regular form filling is not for me.  So
       I've started experimenting with flashcards derived from structured
       notes. Writing the 1st MVP was fast, but productionising it was way
       harder. Content synchronisation when the user can work from
       tube/plane and use multiple devices and content is text is... not
       trivial. So I had to learn about OT (Operational Transformation)
       and CRDT (Conflict-Free Replicated Data Type), and even implemented
       a few iterations of CRDT in Swift. This was intellectually
       rewarding, but the app was not progressing. Also, when you have
       both app data model and CRDT in your head, you start to over-
       optimize - you are leaking abstractions. Thankfully, the CRDT
       market nowadays is pretty mature; Automerge is production-ready,
       and automerge-swift comes with a nice abstraction. I strongly
       believe offline-first apps are the future/now.  ChatGPT happened,
       and it felt like a perfect match for the app, as it's already text-
       focused. First, it was just to provide prompts for the cards, but
       when you turn the problem around, you realise that LLM is great for
       predicting other flashcards in the context of your note. So instead
       of downloading a premade flashcard deck, you start a new note, give
       it a title, and click generate. I still find it weird to watch but
       also mesmerising.  Other features that I think are valuable: App
       data sits within your iCloud account until you use Generative AI
       (LLM). Hopefully, we will get an API from Apple soon.  The Spaced
       Repetition that I've implemented is not really spaced. I wanted the
       app to adapt to the user. So it's focusing on sorting the card deck
       based on your recall and lets you practise as much as you want. I
       found this approach to work way better for me.  Oh, it's
       multilingual with text-to-speech.  Here we are; the 1st production-
       ready "MVP" is live. I'd love to hear your feedback.
        
       Author : munhitsu
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2024-04-07 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.flashnotesapp.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.flashnotesapp.com)
        
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