Flashcard generator: turn your notes and PDFs into study cards
Making flashcards by hand takes longer than studying them, and cards copied straight from notes are often too long to recall. Attach your notes, slides or textbook chapter and this prompt has your todo.is agent write short, one-fact cards, add cloze cards for definitions, and give you a CSV for Anki or Quizlet plus a printable PDF.
The prompt
- Make flashcards from the file I attached ([SOURCE MATERIAL]) for [SUBJECT AND EXAM]. Make about [NUMBER OF CARDS] cards. Rules: one fact per card, the question must make sense on its own, answers under 20 words, use cloze deletions for definitions and key terms, and add a tag for each chapter or topic. Skip anything that is just an example or a story. Mark the 15 most important cards with the tag priority. Give me a CSV with columns Front, Back, Tags ready to import into [FLASHCARD APP], and a printable PDF with 8 cards per page that I can cut and fold. Email both to me.
What to change
- [SOURCE MATERIAL]: E.g. "my lecture slides, weeks 1 to 4", "chapter 7 of my textbook" or "photos of my notes". Attach the files.
- [SUBJECT AND EXAM]: E.g. "Biology 101 midterm", "NCLEX pharmacology" or "Spanish vocab quiz on Friday".
- [NUMBER OF CARDS]: E.g. "80". Or "as many as needed, but no fluff".
- [FLASHCARD APP]: E.g. "Anki", "Quizlet", "RemNote" or "none, just the PDF".
Example result
- Biology 101 midterm: 85 flashcards
- From: lecture slides weeks 1 to 4 (42 slides) · Anki CSV + printable PDF
- Sample cards: cell structure (tag: ch2)
- • Front: What is the main job of the mitochondria?
- • Back: Making ATP through cellular respiration.
- • Front: Which organelle modifies and packages proteins for export?
- • Back: The Golgi apparatus.
- • Front: Name two structures plant cells have that animal cells do not.
- • Back: A cell wall and chloroplasts (also a large central vacuole).
- Cloze cards (tag: ch3)
- • {{c1::Osmosis}} is the diffusion of water across a selectively permeable membrane.
- • Active transport moves substances {{c1::against}} their concentration gradient and needs {{c2::ATP}}.
- Priority cards (tag: priority)
- • Front: What are the stages of mitosis in order?
- • Back: Prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase (then cytokinesis).
- • Front: What does DNA polymerase do during replication?
- • Back: Adds nucleotides to build the new DNA strand, 5' to 3'.
- What was left out
- • The lecturer's story about Robert Hooke's microscope (not testable)
- • Slide 31's diagram labels, made into 4 separate cards instead of one long one
- How the CSV looks
- • Front,Back,Tags
- • "What is the main job of the mitochondria?","Making ATP through cellular respiration.","ch2"
- Import into Anki
- • File > Import, choose the CSV, set the separator to comma
- • Map field 1 to Front, field 2 to Back, field 3 to Tags
- • For cloze cards, pick the Cloze note type when you import that file
How to do it with todo.is
- Attach your notes, slides, PDF chapter or photos of handwritten pages.
- Paste the to-do in todo.is with the subject, the number of cards and your flashcard app, or send it on WhatsApp with the files.
- Your agent emails a CSV to import and a printable PDF.
- Ask for more cards on a weak topic, harder questions, or the same cards translated for a language course.
Tips for a better result
- One fact per card. A card with a 3-part answer is hard to recall and easy to fake.
- Write questions that make sense alone. "What does it do?" is useless a week later.
- Use cloze cards for definitions and lists, and normal question cards for why and how.
- Study a few cards every day with spaced repetition instead of all of them the night before.
flashcard generator: FAQ
- Can it make flashcards from a PDF or slides? Yes. Attach PDF, Word or PowerPoint files, or photos of notes. For scanned pages, your agent reads the text with OCR first.
- Can I import the cards into Anki or Quizlet? Yes. The CSV imports into Anki, Quizlet and most flashcard apps. Cloze cards use the {{c1::…}} format that Anki understands.
- How many flashcards should I make per lecture? Often 15 to 30 per lecture is enough if each card holds one key fact. More cards is not better if many are trivial.
- Does the agent keep my notes private? Your files stay in your own agent workspace, and only your agent uses them.
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