Compared with Anki
If you have used Anki, much of falsewrk will feel familiar. Anki is a free flashcard app built on spaced repetition, widely used by medical students and language learners, and its decades of design decisions are a good guide to what works. falsewrk borrows from it directly — and differs where engineering judgement is not the same thing as remembering facts.
How Anki works, briefly
Section titled “How Anki works, briefly”Anki schedules cards. Each card has its own interval. When you review one, you grade yourself with one of four buttons — Again, Hard, Good or Easy — and the scheduler sets the next interval from that grade.
Its classic scheduler descends from SM-2, the SuperMemo algorithm Piotr Woźniak published in 1987: a successful review multiplies the interval by the card’s ease (starting at 250%), and failing a card sends it back to relearning. Newer versions of Anki also offer FSRS, a scheduler fitted to your own review history.
New cards pass through short learning steps (by default, 1 minute and then 10 minutes) before they graduate to day-long intervals. Two daily limits keep the workload in check: a cap on new cards per day (20 by default) and on reviews per day.
What falsewrk borrows
Section titled “What falsewrk borrows”| Anki | falsewrk |
|---|---|
| Intervals grow when you succeed | The gap × 2.5 on an excellent rep |
| A failed card goes to relearning | A missed settled type asks for 3 more reps that day |
| Learning steps before a card graduates | A type asks for 3 reps a visit until it settles |
| New cards per day | 3 new types a day |
| Maximum reviews per day | 20 owed reps a day |
| One review per card when it is due | One graded rep per type per day |
The two daily limits come from the lesson Anki’s own manual teaches most firmly: adding too much new material today is what overwhelms you next week.
Where falsewrk differs
Section titled “Where falsewrk differs”It grades you; you don’t. Anki asks how well you think you did. falsewrk compares your number with the true value. There is no button to press generously on a tired evening, and no way to be wrong about how right you were.
A card is a problem type, not a fact. An Anki card has one answer, and after enough reviews you can recall it without understanding it. Every falsewrk rep is a fresh version of the problem with different numbers, so the only thing that carries over between reps is the method.
Time counts. An excellent answer that took 30 seconds or more holds its interval instead of growing it. Fluency is part of the skill.
Retained is measured separately. Anki reports how often you pass reviews. falsewrk separates the reps you do while warm from the cold reads after a week away, and reports both.
Days are short by design. An Anki deck can hold thousands of cards, each on its own clock, so a day’s reviews can run long. falsewrk schedules problem types, not individual problems, so a day is usually a handful of reps — a few minutes, done properly.