recall

Spaced-repetition flashcards as plain markdown. Beautiful, runs anywhere (on your phone/desktop, on airplane/subway), and $0/month.

Like Anki — but cards are .md files you write in seconds, the scheduler (FSRS) means you review less to remember the same, and you run your own copy on Cloudflare's free tier. No account. No subscription. Nothing to babysit.

_{▶ Watch the full-quality video}

Why you'll keep using it

Review less, remember more. FSRS shows you each card right as you're about to forget it, and retunes itself to your memory from your own history. Same retention, fewer reviews — it gives you your time back.

Cards you'll actually write. A card is just front / --- / back. Real markdown: code with highlighting, KaTeX math, paste an image straight in. No clunky note-type editors to fight.

What does `Box<T>` do in Rust?
---
Heap-allocates `T`.

Fast, everywhere, offline. Opens instantly, works on the subway, syncs the second you're back. Add it to your phone's home screen and it's an app. Review on your laptop and phone — the history merges, it never conflicts.

Never held hostage. No subscription renting you your own memory, no startup that can disappear with ten years of your decks. Every card is a text file you can open, grep, or edit in any editor — today and in thirty years.

Capture from anywhere. A browser extension turns highlighted text on any page into cards: right-click → it drafts a few atomic cards (one per idea), you trim and edit → save. Generation runs on your own worker (Cloudflare Workers AI, free tier, no extra key), and every card is shown before it's saved.

Setup — about 5 minutes, all free

1. Fork this repo. → Fork (Use Fork, not "Use this template" — a template can't pull future updates; a fork can, and that's what powers auto-updates below.)

2. Create a free Cloudflare account. → sign up (This is where your copy runs.)

3. Make a private repo for your cards. Anything, e.g. recall-decks. Your decks live here as .md files — you can even hand-write cards on GitHub.

4. Create a GitHub token scoped to only that cards repo, Contents → Read and write. → new fine-grained token

5. Run the one-command wizard. It logs into Cloudflare, creates the database, sets your secrets, builds, and deploys — then prints your personal app URL.

git clone https://github.com/<you>/recall
cd recall
node tools/setup.mjs

6. Open your URL on each device. Paste your app token in Settings → Sync now. On a phone, "Add to Home Screen" installs the app. A welcome deck takes it from there.

Auto-updates

Your copy keeps itself current. Flip this on once and you never deploy again — every week it pulls the latest from here and redeploys itself:

1. On your fork → Actions tab → enable workflows.
2. Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → add your Cloudflare credentials and D1 id (the exact four are listed at the top of deploy.yml). Your worker secrets stay on Cloudflare — they're never copied to GitHub.

That's it. A weekly job fast-forwards your fork and redeploys, hands-off. Want an update now? Hit Sync fork on your repo, or Run workflow on the Actions page. Customizing? Keep changes on a branch — the auto-sync is fast-forward-only, so it leaves a diverged main alone and just redeploys it.

_{GitHub pauses a fork's scheduled jobs after 60 days idle — it emails you, one click resumes. Prefer fully manual? git pull upstream main && node tools/setup.mjs re-runs safely.}

Will I really pay $0?

Yes. Steady-state sync is one ~100ms request, and even a heavy 200-reviews-a-day habit doesn't come close to Cloudflare's free limits (100k requests and 100k DB writes per day). One deployment comfortably covers you — and a few family members. Running a public service off one free account is the only thing it's not built for.

Architecture

app/        — React PWA (Vite + TS + Tailwind + Dexie + ts-fsrs)
worker/     — Cloudflare Worker: serves the app (static assets) + API at /api
              (Hono + D1 + GitHub proxy + Workers AI)
extension/  — Chrome/Chromium MV3 extension: highlight → flashcard
tools/      — setup wizard, maintenance scripts

• Cards/media: the app keeps a local copy in IndexedDB and pushes edits as git commits via the worker (your GitHub token never leaves Cloudflare). Pulls diff the repo tree against local blob SHAs.
• Reviews: each rating is scheduled locally with ts-fsrs immediately and queued; the worker stores the append-only log in D1 and derives canonical FSRS state by replaying each card's log, which devices adopt on next sync.
• Everything works offline; queues drain on reconnect.

See SPEC.md for the original design document.

Development

cd worker && cp wrangler.example.toml wrangler.toml  # fill in placeholders
cd worker && npx wrangler dev    # API + local D1 at localhost:8787
cd app && npm run dev            # app at localhost:5173, /api proxied to 8787

Tests: npx vitest run in app/ (card format, scheduler, optimizer data prep) and worker/ (replay determinism/convergence). CI runs both plus typechecks on every push.

License

MIT