Show HN: I combined spaced repetition with emails so you can remember anything

This is so cool and something I’ve wanted for a long time, but it isn’t quite right yet (for what I personally want in an app like this.)

I am your target market, and I’d buy the lifetime /annual sub in a second if it had these features:

I want control of the SR sequence or, I want to know what SR algo you are using and know it is best practice model. The landing page says 4 sends, but that isn’t true SR.

The next thing, I’d want to see all of my “cards” or information pieces when I am logged in, so I can see and edit and delete and keep the database clean with a total view of content. The next thing I’d need (maybe you have this?) is for the email to effectively be a flash card, where the email content is the front and a link the email takes me to the “back” of the card so I can’t use cloze delete and other techniques. The last thing is bulk upload of content via a csv so I can bulk import mochi /anki / llm generated content.

I wish you luck with this and would (selfishly) encourage you to not ship so many different things, and instead encourage you to pick one and make it best in class for niche users like me who would spend and spend on premium solutions, but won’t spend on superficial implementations.

iskrataa · 9 months ago

Can't thank you enough for the feedback. These are all great ideas which I'll look into.

I was wondering what is your experience with Anki? Are there reasons you are looking into alternatives or do you just like the idea of getting stuff by email? Thanks again!

safety1st · 9 months ago

On the topic of SR specifically, what does it mean to be best in class? I am just a layperson who uses a SR tool or two and has a passing interest in the topic, but the Wikipedia article on SR gives the impression that there are a variety of algorithms out there and none are established by research to be definitively better than the others, in fact the Criticism section mentions a study which found that absolute spacing was just as good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition#Research_and...

The OP said he's using Ebbinghaus' "forgetting curve" which is not exactly a SR algorithm but something similar, there is an actual formula associated with it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

komuW · 9 months ago

Take a look at FSRS.

The paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3534678.3539081?cid=996605471...

Various implementations: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/awesome-fsrs

Some benchmarks of various srs algorithms: https://expertium.github.io/Benchmark.html

wellthisisgreat · 9 months ago

Hey not to distract from OPs post, but I wanted to get into SR for a while, and your "what is your algo" question aligns with my line of thinking when approaching new methodology.

Could you please share your SR tech stack? Are there good apps etc., that can make the process a bit easier? The pen-and-paper approach I used in uni for learning kanji / new languages has scarred me somewhat, so I am eager to try something tech-heavy.

iskrataa · 9 months ago

Hey, happy to help here.

During my research, I found this Reddit post which was in lots of help, especially for beginners.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/17u01ge/spaced_repeti...

They expand their work on their GitHub as well.

https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/Spa...

simple10 · 9 months ago

Congrats on the launch! I second the request for lifetime pricing option.

Also, the jump between $4/mo to $59/mo could use more explanation to justify the price gap.

It's worth considering listing GinkoNotes on AppSumo if you decide to offer a lifetime deal. I think it would do extremely well.

iskrataa · 9 months ago

Hey, there is a lifetime option and it's just the higher number you mentioned.

I suppose it's not immediately obvious that it's a one-off purchase, so I'll be working on the design aspect of this.

Thanks for your interest and suggestions!

crashabr · 9 months ago

You should try Readwise

latentsea · 9 months ago

Why email at this point and not just Anki?

ozim · 9 months ago

Not the person you asked - but for me it is that I check emails compulsively any other app I have to remember/tend to forget. Like Todoist is great but I can go weeks without opening it and I skip tasks because of it unless I set email notifications.

This is an interesting approach. Congrats on shipping!

I worry that it won't be effective. Systems like Supermemo and Anki work because of:

1) Spaced repetition (showing you the thing at the right time).

2) Retrieval practice (having your brain practice retrieving the thing you're about to forget).

3) Feedback and automation (using your self-rating to schedule the next review).

You are doing #1 and #3.

But you totally skip #2, because you show all the info in the email. So, unlike Anki, Supermemo or Quantum Country (which someone mentioned in another comment), there's no front/back or cloze deletion, and no retrieval practice happening.

Perhaps putting the question in the email subject and the answer in the email body would work?

iskrataa · 9 months ago

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree, and this is something I thought about a lot during the design process. In my experience, just looking at the note (#1 in your example) helps a lot more than no repetitions (which is obvious of course), but it's still a huge improvement compared to my previous flow.

As for repetition, I was thinking of replying to the email with what you think is the answer and letting an LLM decide if you remember correctly. Is that something that sounds effective to you?

vineyardmike · 9 months ago

Just create a “show answer” link.

The link can literally encode the answer in the URL, which you can just hide the raw url it in the emails’s HTML. (Fox examples, put it as base64 chars in query parameters)

Then you can host a (static) webpage that renders the text. This lets you host any users text w/o an interactive site. No live database, no ops burden, etc.

If you wanted to get fancy (which users of such a product probably would probably want) throw in “success/failure” links so your users can report the results and get changed frequency of spaced repetitions based on their success rate.

a3w · 9 months ago

For Pete sake, don’t use an LLM.

Just use CSS to hide/show the answers, or a little bit of JavaScript for just that. Or scrolling, if it is text only. Or links to the answer an http server.

rahimnathwani · 9 months ago

  I was thinking of replying to the email with what you think is the answer and letting an LLM decide if you remember correctly. Is that something that sounds effective to you?

The nice thing about your tool is the simplicity and low-friction due to using email. For retrieval, replies might work, but I wonder whether the people who are willing to do that work are the same people who would just install Anki instead.

passwordreset · 9 months ago

Email seems like a no-go here. It would feel like spam. If you wanted a something more conversational, I'd consider doing this over text messages.

85392_school · 9 months ago

You can practice retrieving something without entering and checking it.

david_allison · 9 months ago

More information on #2 (colloquially known as 'active recall'): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect

gravity2060 · 9 months ago

wrboyce · 9 months ago

Very interesting concept! I was about to dive right in when a voice in my head reminded me that my inbox discipline is terrible and I don’t need even more automated emails that will serve only to increase my unread count (which currently stands at 16878 in my Personal inbox).

Have you considered expanding this to notify via other mediums such as iMessage (if possible, this would be my preference) or the presumably easier WhatsApp/Telegram (the Telegram Bot API is pretty great, I’d imagine would be very easy)?

I’d also echo the free trial sentiment expressed elsewhere in the comments, take the mythical drug dealer approach and get ‘em hooked on freebies!

Yes, that's definitely a major drawback for people who are not so active via email (or got their inboxes spammed by marketing haha).

Will explore some options with the messaging apps, thank you! Do you think at this point it's not easier to open a specific app for that or there's a reason you prefer it to be via a messaging app?

andai · 9 months ago

Getting messaged is different from opening Anki, which I often avoid for months at a time. I imagine I'd be much more likely to respond to a notification just because of how strong of a habit that is.

I feel like writing a specific app is not only more effort on your part but easier to ignore on mine (and more friction, a lot of people are hesitant to install new apps).

Personally I'm a big iMessage/Telegram user and as such unlikely to leave things unread on those mediums (they're one of the few apps that I allow to push notifications and display an "unread" badge); my reading of your post was that a selling point of GinkgoNotes is that it appears in already established workflows.

TripleChecker · 9 months ago

Neat idea! I might consider pushing a free trial more since this feels like the type of product someone could begin to rely on and then be more likely to upgrade. A few positive testimonials wouldn't hurt.

A couple minor link fixes on your homepage, see here: https://triplechecker.com/s/230357/ginkgonotes.com.

1) Blog on footer is broken link 2) Affiliates on footer doesn't take you anywhere

Yes, I agree with both statements. Although I'm just starting and don't have any testimonials yet, I was thinking of sending an email to users requesting testimonials in exchange for the premium plan.

Just fixed the footer, nice catch! Shipping fast comes with some faulty copy pastes I guess...

That could work. Happy to help!

namaria · 9 months ago

Storing facts is a poor proxy for acquired knowledge or skill. When you are good at something, you know a lot of facts. Trying to memorize facts to get good at something is inverting the order of factors. You memorize a lot of facts about a domain because you spent a lot of time and attention in it. But finding shortcuts to memorize facts won't in fact give you the actual knowledge and skills, just a way to mimic them convincingly.

gimmecoffee · 9 months ago

I recently started learning Japanese and "storing facts" using spaced repetition, and it's great for learning Hiragana / Katakana.

It's also very useful for things like passphrases.

Sometimes, you just need to memorize things.

I have acquired several languages, and I can tell you that naive memorization is a poor proxy for language acquisition. The best way to acquire a language is to use it a lot, consume a lot and produce a lot of language. Memorizing words and grammar may feel like learning a language, but it's very inefficient compared to just consuming and producing language in a natural setting.

siva7 · 9 months ago

This is a common fallacy around science students who use anki for the first time. Smashing a deck without accompanying learning ressources won't lead to connecting the dots like you would in a traditional learning setting. So given an exam you would probably fail as you can't connect the dots because you just memorized facts in a random order. The exception is of course language learning for which anki and spaced repetition was made originally because random order doesn't matter and connecting facts neither.

exe34 · 9 months ago

> Smashing a deck without accompanying learning ressources

why does everybody keep pretending this is a dichotomy?

nefrix · 9 months ago

This is such a smart answer. i am adding this comment so i can remember where to look when I am thinking of re-reading your comment about memory;

For me, more than memorising things, is creating paths in order to find that piece of information when need it; and yes, you are right, we memorise when we need that information to apply it in a specific moment;

smeej · 9 months ago

I finally admitted to myself that a robust PKM can store and recall more information more easily than I ever could. It's quite a bit of work to process things I read or listen to into my PKM, but whenever I decide to revisit an idea, I can immediately pull up and review everything I've previously thought it would be useful to remember about it.

My PKM of choice (Logseq) does have a built-in SRS, though, so maybe I should consider having putting things I really, really, really want to remember into it so they're stored in my brain as well.

I think you're making fun of me, which is fine.

But memorizing in stead of learning is an anxiety driven behavior that leads to inefficient use of time. You're welcome to do it but I am trying to contribute my own hard earned lesson that you don't need to fret about retaining facts. Just spend time doing the things you want to learn about and the useful facts will be retained.

geros · 9 months ago

I developed an open source app that tries to solve this problem. Active recall at the topic level with spaced repetition email reminders using FSRS algorithm. https://github.com/Gerosullivan/Learntime

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tsekiguchi · 9 months ago

Readwise also has this feature. I get a daily email with a random assortment of highlights that have been pulled in from multiple sources (Reader, Notion, Kindle, etc.)

The product benefit in their case is that it's kind of like Zapier, but for notes.

https://readwise.io/

RamblingCTO · 9 months ago

Gingko notes have been a thing maybe 10 years ago? I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but wasn't graph-based note taking? Was really cool!

The idea of spaced repetition via email reminds me of readwise as well.

shanusmagnus · 9 months ago

You're thinking of this [1]. Super duper cool idea, ahead of its time. Author seems to have transitioned to a ludicrous pricing model, but I suspect it's because the people who like it really _love_ it. I used to be among them, but then switched to org-mode .

[1] https://gingkowriter.com/

leobg · 9 months ago

I’m curious what you mean. $9/mo for a tool targeting professional writers doesn’t sound that ludicrous to me.

Yes, Readwise was sort of an inspiration for me too, but looked like wasted potential as they don't track or use any algorithms for you to remember, and lack support for external links/sources (I may be wrong here).

dirkc · 9 months ago

Well done shipping your project! I like the low-friction demo on the page! I assume I'll receive an email in a few days from now? Are you using those emails for marketing/a mailing list?

Thank you! You're both right—you'll get your repetitions, and I'll add you to the user mailing list (unless you opt-out).