[HN Gopher] Hashcards: A Plain-Text Spaced Repetition System
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Hashcards: A Plain-Text Spaced Repetition System
Author : thomascountz
Score : 121 points
Date : 2025-12-14 16:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (borretti.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (borretti.me)
| mstipetic wrote:
| I wish more people knew about GNU recutils instead of inventing
| new formats
| leobg wrote:
| Guilty as charged. First time I hear about it. Thanks. Looks
| like a natively LLM friendly database format.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recutils
| mstipetic wrote:
| Yes! I have a whole blog post in the works about how they
| make an awesome LLM memory layer.
| knowsuchagency wrote:
| Could you link to it? I'd love to read it. This is also my
| first time learning of recutils
| blitz_skull wrote:
| Inform me please. Never heard of it.
| OJFord wrote:
| You could think of it like markdown but for structured data,
| with a spec for how to do that and a utility for querying
| them.
| OJFord wrote:
| I like recfiles, it's been a while but I started on Rust
| helpers (OP project is in rust) if it's any use:
| https://github.com/OJFord/recfiles-rs
|
| Not abandoned exactly, I just haven't been working on the
| project that I wanted it for in _gosh has it been that long_.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| I wish there were more/better tools for working with recutils.
| I had a phase of trying to use recutils wherever it made sense,
| a few years ago, but the format has a lot of redundancy (not a
| bad thing in itself), and editor support to make working with
| that easier was basically non-existent (perhaps it exists only
| for Emacs). Using the command-line interface for everything was
| way too cumbersome. Visidata claimed to support the format,
| which got me excited, but in my experience it mangled the file
| if you had anything more than a basic set of records, and the
| support for display too was overall very rudimentary.
| yanis_t wrote:
| I've been working on knowledge base + spaced repetition project
| _, and I know how convenient markdown files are.
|
| 1. You can view them anywhere (Github renders them nicely) 2. You
| can edit them in your favorite editor 3. Formatting doesn't
| decrease the readability 4. Extensible (syntax highlighting,
| mermaid, mathjax, etc.) 5. Cross-linking which is a core for any
| knowledge system is free 6. You can use Git for versioning and
| backup, etc, etc.
|
| _ https://github.com/odosui/mt
| karencarits wrote:
| This looks really interesting! I am studying "knowledge-heavy"
| subjects with lots of facts I need to learn, and have been
| looking for software where I can write flashcards directly
| within my notes, and both review them when reading my notes,
| and globally across notes. I like to have my notes locally, so
| I didnt find any good solutions. But there are some parsers for
| anki that can process markdown documents and extract items
| within them
| smarkmt wrote:
| For language learning I've found audio playback and images to be
| very useful.
|
| Could you imagine adding support for this?
| leobg wrote:
| For the bar exam, I used a combination of an outliner and
| flashcards. Back then, I was usimg a PalmPilot. The idea was:
|
| 1. Turn the subject matter into a knowledge tree. 2. If a branch
| has more than 5 leaves, you split it up. 3. Flashcards are
| generated by traversing the tree. The parent node is the
| question, the child nodes are the answer.
|
| The benefit of the tree is that it forces you to think about
| where in your structure a given piece of new information fits.
| smarkmt wrote:
| W.r.t data entry I've resorted at times to using a Google
| spreadsheet with autogenerated row UUIDs (it's useful for content
| to have a persistent ID in case you have to correct a typo or add
| new fields).
|
| I also often found myself wanting to make different flashcard
| decks from the same basic information (for Mandarin pinyin
| sentence --> character recognition, characters --> English
| translation).
|
| If there was a sheets like data entry interface backed by a text
| format it would be great.l (I rolled things with streamlit but
| it's always cumbersome to get started).
| themk wrote:
| Yes, the inability to edit cards due to the content-addressing
| seems like a majot drawback.
| ichverstehe wrote:
| Allow me to plug Ankivalenz[1], my library that turns
| (structured) Markdown files into Anki decks, using a syntax like
| this: # Solar System ## Planets
| ### Color - Earth ?:: Blue - Mars ?:: Red
|
| The best thing about it (for me) is that the header structure
| (and any parent list items) are added to the cards, e.g.:
| Path: Solar System > Planets > Color Front: Earth
| Back: Blue
|
| This hierarchy makes it much easier to formulate succinct cards,
| in my experience.
|
| The syntax also means that I can easily add cards from my regular
| Markdown notes, so regular notes and Anki cards live together.
|
| [1] https://github.com/vangberg/ankivalenz/
| adangit wrote:
| Working on a Rails FSRS app, similar focus on healthy defaults,
| trying to find the 80/20 of what Anki does today:
| https://cadence.cards, free side project.
| ashishb wrote:
| Markdown is the final perfect form for every text (non-binary)
| content based system.
|
| Every product will eventually use markdown as their content
| store.
| krackers wrote:
| One of the biggest benefits of LLMs is that products are
| incentivized to have a way to import and export from markdown.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I'm happy to see others in the space, but I wish Anki competitors
| would implement a decent 'import from Anki' feature. Otherwise, I
| think most existing users of SRS are unlikely to switch (because
| we use Anki and have thousands of cards there already).
|
| The data format of Anki is a bit complicated but at least it's
| SQLite. I've seen a ton of shared decks and resources on ankiweb,
| but it's true you can't easily put them on GitHub.
| rikafurude21 wrote:
| Isnt a sqldump just a text file? That should be easily
| shareable on Github
| erhuve wrote:
| Know a big proponent of hashcards, has a setup[1] that's followed
| up by a prompt[2] that converts websites, pdfs, etc. into
| hashcards for SRS.
|
| [1] https://www.zo.computer/prompts/hashcards-setup
|
| [2] https://www.zo.computer/prompts/add-flashcards
| analogpixel wrote:
| Does anyone outside of people in school or language learners use
| these type of tools in any interesting ways?
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Ok but what about images and formulas?
| jbstack wrote:
| > First, [Anki] is ugly to look at, particularly the review
| screen.
|
| You can customise note types with CSS and Javascript, which means
| that you can make cards look however you want.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I don't mind people comparing such projects against Anki, this is
| natural since Anki is quite dominant in this space, but I feel
| like every criticism of Anki on that list was either highly
| subjective, exaggerated, unfair, or outright wrong and unkind (in
| a "one does not climb a ladder by throwing others off it"
| manner). Not saying this is what Fernando intended to do here,
| but his sharp opinion does come across a bit like it here.
|
| Personally, I find the interface is extremely functional; the
| ability to have deck hierarchies to be a massive feature, not a
| bug; the WYSIWYG being the default being obvious given the
| intended audience, but one can still easily edit a textfile and
| import it or edit in html mode directly if desired; converting
| something into latex math is as simple as enclosing it in "[$]
| ... [/$]" and hardly the nightmare it's portrayed as; and finally
| potentially hacky plugins is a feature, not a bug: occasionally
| you have a very specific problem and some kind soul creates a
| solution for you, which may be functional but not the most
| aesthetically pleasing. That's fine. Anki is a bazaar, not a
| cathedral, and plugins have ratings and reviews which you can
| consult if necessary.
|
| I have tried many different flashcard solutions, including hacky
| text-based ones, and I always return to Anki. Despite the fact
| that most other tools in my stack that I swear by are terminal-
| based.
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