🃏 Dan's Study Decks

Welcome to my study decks, a personal, version-controlled collection of flashcards designed for use with Anki, a powerful tool for learning and memory retention using spaced repetition. This project stores all flashcards in Markdown format, making them easy to edit, review, and automate.

Whether you're a student, a self-learner, or just curious about how to retain knowledge more effectively, this repository provides a transparent and structured way to build and manage your card decks.

• 🃏 Dan's Study Decks
  • 📚 What Is Anki?
  • 🚀 Getting Started
  • 📦 Directory Structure
  • 🧠 Why Markdown?
  • 💡 Tips and Best Practices
  • 📄 License

📚 What Is Anki?

Anki is an open-source flashcard application that uses spaced repetition to help you memorise information more effectively. It works on desktop, mobile, and the web, and supports powerful features like tagging, multimedia, and cloze deletions.

• AnkiWeb, a free web-based interface for syncing your cards across devices
• Anki Desktop, the main desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux
• AnkiMobile, the official iOS app for Anki

Note

If you're on iOS, make sure you install AnkiMobile, not AnkiApp. This is a common source of confusion. Only AnkiMobile syncs with AnkiWeb and works with this deck format.

🚀 Getting Started

1. Browse Existing Content: Check the decks/ directory for topic-based decks (e.g. LLM fine-tuning, programming, engineering).

2. Create or Edit Decks: Use the templates from templates/ directory to:

   • Create new decks with regular-deck-template.md or cloze-deck-template.md
   • Write cards in Markdown under decks/<topic>/deck.md
   • Use tags and headers to keep content organised

3. Convert to Anki Format: Run the conversion script to generate import-ready CSV files, for example:

   python scripts/md2csv.py templates/regular-deck-template.md

   This will create CSV files in the export/ directory.

4. Import to Anki: Import the generated CSV files into your Anki app of choice.

5. Maintain & Review: Keep your decks up-to-date by regularly:

   • Adding new cards as you learn
   • Reviewing and updating existing cards
   • Organising with consistent tags
   • Committing changes to version control

📦 Directory Structure

dans-study-decks/
├── decks/                  # Topic-based Markdown decks
├── export/                 # Generated CSV files for Anki import
├── scripts/
│   └── md2csv.py           # Conversion script (Markdown → CSV)
├── templates/              # Templates for new decks
│   ├── cloze-deck-template.md
│   └── regular-deck-template.md
└── README.md               # You’re here!

🧠 Why Markdown?

Markdown is a clean, readable format that enables:

• Easy editing in any text editor
• Collaboration and version control with Git
• Automated processing using scripts or language models
• Transparency in how your knowledge is structured

💡 Tips and Best Practices

• Keep your flashcards atomic, one concept per card.
• Use tags to organise cards by topic.
• Regularly refactor or delete poor cards that don't help your memory.
• You can generate cards with ChatGPT or other LLMs from your notes or readings.
• Sync across devices, access on mobile.

📄 License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For full license terms, please see LICENCE.md.

Copyright © 2025 Dan Stefaniuk. All rights reserved.