HN Reader

I'm always apprehensive about "efficiencies" like this because the process of generating the cards contributes substantially to the learning and memory formation.

Can anyone help me understand the opposing view better?

This is a fantastic toolkit, and the discussion in the comments about the learning benefits of manual creation is spot-on.

I think the real killer feature here isn't just bulk-generating new cards, but enriching existing, manually-created ones.

My ideal workflow would be:

Manually create a basic card when I encounter a new word (e.g., the word and the sentence I found it in). This preserves that crucial "moment of discovery" and initial learning. Once a week or so, run anki-llm as a batch process on all new cards to add powerful, context-rich fields like: etymology, common collocations, or subtle nuance (vs. a similar word). This way, you get the best of both worlds: the initial learning from manual creation, followed by automated enrichment that would be too tedious to do by hand. Really powerful stuff, great work!

I love this. Two things I noticed and liked:

- the README is extremely detailed and clear: all the commands are explained with examples and the why to use each one

- you're using Anki Connect to edit decks in-place, instead of trying to edit or generate an apkg file. This simplifies things and avoids issues such as needing to create custom note types or avoiding creating two note types with the same field

When my son and I have discussed a topic in response to a question, ideally I would evaluate whether there's something he should remember forever and, if so, I would create one or more Anki notes for that piece of knowledge. But right now it's too much effort, unless I'm at my desk. Even then, I need to copy and paste card fields from a chat interface into the Anki UI. That means I rarely do it.

I'm curious about the effect of "hand writing" a card for spaced repetition. It sure feels like it helps me learn more effectively when I write high-quality cards myself, but n=1 in this case. Even when I use an LLM to help, I have never find the cards to be useful by default—same goes for trying to use other's decks.

That said, what I'd really love is a better card writing UI. If I could simply edit the table when in the browse view instead of opening the form view, that'd be a big step up!

Awesome, I was thinking of building something like this for myself but less automated. Basically, generate language flashcards for a given set of words and phrases. The automation part is the translation and the upload. It this might do it.