About SmartRecall
About SmartRecall
SmartRecall turns the hardest part of studying — making good flashcards — into a one-click step, then schedules every review on the SM-2 spaced-repetition algorithm so you stop relearning the same thing twice.
Why we built this
Every serious learner eventually finds spaced repetition. Most never finish using it. The reason is mundane: writing thousands of high-quality cards by hand from a 600-page PDF is more work than the studying it replaces. Anki is a great review engine surrounded by a card-authoring problem.
We started SmartRecall to fix the authoring half. Upload a PDF, paste a chapter, drop in a syllabus — the model reads the source, identifies what's actually testable, and emits multi-format cards (cloze, basic, definition, comparison) that match how you'll be examined. The SM-2 scheduler — the same algorithm Piotr Wozniak published in 1987 and the basis of Anki — handles the review side.
What we believe
- The science isn't broken; the workflow is. Spaced repetition has 40+ years of evidence behind it. The bottleneck for 99% of learners is the cards, not the algorithm.
- AI should generate, not memorize for you. The model writes the cards. The student does the recall. Flipping that breaks the learning effect — and we won't ship features that do it.
- Open data, open exit. Every deck is exportable to standard
.apkg(Anki) format. No lock-in. - Privacy is non-negotiable. Your uploaded PDFs are processed for card generation, not training. See our Privacy Policy.
How SmartRecall is different
| SmartRecall | Anki | Quizlet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Card authoring | AI from PDF / text | Manual | Manual + community decks |
| Scheduler | SM-2 | SM-2 (modified) | Leitner-style |
| PDF ingestion | Native | Add-on required | None |
| Anki export | Yes | — | No |
| Cross-platform | Web + iOS | Desktop + mobile | Web + mobile |
What's next
- Public roadmap on the Updates page.
- Deeper methodology writeups under Blog.
- An Android app, an FSRS scheduler option, and shareable public decks are on the near-term list.
Who's behind it
Alex Chen — Founder & Memory Researcher.
Alex built SmartRecall after burning through three months of USMLE prep on Anki, making cards by hand and falling further behind every week. The fix wasn't a better review algorithm — SM-2 already works. The fix was getting the cards out of the textbook in the first place. Writes about spaced repetition, the cognitive science of long-term memory, and where AI helps (and hurts) studying.
Reach Alex on the SmartRecall side via [email protected].
Contact
- Support: [email protected]
- Issues / feature requests: same address — every email is read by a human, usually within one business day.