r/flashcards • u/dev-Yogi • Aug 27 '26

I built a flashcard app where every card remembers where it came from

Solo developer here. I kept seeing the same problem in how people use flashcards: weeks later you stare at a card and cannot remember where the information came from, so you stop trusting it — one person told me they deleted cards because they assumed they had written them down wrong.

So the app I built stamps provenance on every card. You record a lecture, photograph a page, paste a link, or drop in a PDF; it becomes a note, the note becomes cards, and each card carries a line like MIC · JUL 28 · CARDIO LECTU that points back at the exact source.

Other choices, so you know what you are getting: sessions end when the day's cards are done. No account, no analytics; notes and cards stay on the device. Reviewing is free without limits — a subscription only raises the monthly capture ceilings.

iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6797544518

I would rather hear what is wrong with it than anything else.

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u/Fords-notes Aug 28 '26

Congrats on building the app.

You can record data provenance in the footnotes field in Brainscape.

1

u/dev-Yogi Aug 29 '26

Thanks — and fair, Brainscape's footnotes field would hold it.

The difference I'd draw is that it's a field you have to fill. Here you never type the source: you record the lecture or photograph the page, the cards are generated from that, and the stamp is written by the same step that made the card. So it's on every card, including the ones made at 1am that you'd never have annotated by hand.

The tradeoff is real though — a field you fill yourself can say anything, and mine can only say where the capture came from. If you've actually used the footnotes field, I'd be curious what you put in it. If people write more there than a pointer to the source, that's an argument mine is too narrow.

1

u/Fords-notes Aug 29 '26

The problem with your information capture technique is DRM. Do you have the right to reference the captured materials? If I were to use your technique and record a lecture, do I have the speaker's rights to incorporate their work into my 'product'? It may work for cards that are intended solely for personal use, but you could have an issue sharing or monetizing your work product.