Make study notes from a PDF of slides, papers or handouts
Lecture slides are written to be talked over, not studied from: half-sentences, no context, 80 pages per week. Attach the PDFs from your course and your agent merges them into one set of organized notes, fills in the missing explanations, keeps the slide numbers so you can find the original, and adds a one-page cheat sheet for the night before.
The prompt
- Make study notes from these PDFs: [PDF FILES]. They are for [COURSE] and the exam is [EXAM TYPE]. Organize the notes by topic, not by file, and merge repeated content. For each topic: a short explanation in full sentences, definitions, one worked example from the PDFs, and the slide or page number it came from. Where a slide only has bullet points, explain what they mean. Mark anything that the lecturer says will be on the exam. Add a one-page cheat sheet with formulas and must-know facts, and a list of 10 questions to test myself. Format: [FORMAT], with clear headings and a table of contents. Leave out [WHAT TO SKIP].
What to change
- [PDF FILES]: Attach one or more PDFs (slides, handouts, readings), up to 50 MB each. Scanned PDFs are read with OCR.
- [COURSE]: E.g. "PSYC 210 Cognitive Psychology", "Microeconomics, week 1–6".
- [EXAM TYPE]: E.g. "multiple choice", "short answer", "open book", "essay". Changes how notes are written.
- [FORMAT]: "Word file" (to edit), "PDF" (to print) or "Markdown" (for Notion or Obsidian).
- [WHAT TO SKIP]: E.g. "the optional readings", "week 3", "title and admin slides". Or "nothing".
Example result
- PSYC 210 Cognitive Psychology: study notes, weeks 1–6
- Sources: 6 lecture PDFs (212 slides). Exam: short answer.
- Contents
- • 1. Memory models
- • 2. Working memory
- • 3. Encoding and levels of processing
- • 4. Forgetting
- • 5. Attention
- 1. Memory models (Week 2, slides 4–19)
- The multi-store model (Atkinson and Shiffrin) says information passes from sensory memory to short-term memory and, with rehearsal, to long-term memory. Each store differs in how much it holds and how long.
- • Sensory memory: very brief, large capacity
- • Short-term memory: about 7 ± 2 items (Miller), lasts around 18–30 seconds without rehearsal
- • Long-term memory: very large capacity, can last a lifetime
- • Criticism: too simple. It treats short-term memory as one store and rehearsal as the only route to long-term memory.
- Exam flag: the lecturer said "you should be able to evaluate this model" (slide 19).
- 2. Working memory (Week 3, slides 2–21)
- Baddeley and Hitch replaced the single short-term store with a system of parts.
- • Central executive: directs attention, has no storage of its own
- • Phonological loop: holds sounds and words (the "inner voice")
- • Visuospatial sketchpad: holds images and positions
- • Episodic buffer: added later; links the parts with long-term memory
- Worked example (slide 14): you can tap a rhythm while describing a picture, but not count backwards while repeating words, because the last two both use the phonological loop.
- Cheat sheet (excerpt)
- • STM capacity: 7 ± 2 items; chunking increases it
- • Serial position effect: primacy (LTM) and recency (STM)
- • Interference: proactive (old blocks new), retroactive (new blocks old)
- • Craik and Lockhart: deeper (meaning-based) processing gives better recall
- Test yourself
- • 1. Give one strength and one weakness of the multi-store model.
- • 2. Why can two tasks interfere with each other in working memory?
- • 3. Explain the difference between proactive and retroactive interference with an example.
How to do it with todo.is
- Attach your PDFs and replace the brackets with your course, exam type, format and anything to skip.
- Send the to-do on the Today screen in todo.is, or forward the files to your agent on Telegram or WhatsApp.
- Download the notes as Word, PDF or Markdown, with slide numbers on every section.
- Add new lecture PDFs each week and ask your agent to update the same notes file instead of starting over.
Tips for a better result
- Send all the PDFs for a unit together. Notes organized by topic across lectures are far easier to revise than one set per file.
- Tell it the exam type. Multiple choice needs precise definitions; essays need arguments and evaluation.
- Keep slide numbers in the notes so you can check the original diagram or wording when something looks off.
- Choose Markdown if you study in Notion or Obsidian, and Word if you want to add your own notes in the margins.
study notes from a PDF: FAQ
- Can it read scanned PDFs? Yes. Scanned pages are read with OCR. Very blurry scans or handwriting may have small errors, so check numbers and names.
- How many PDFs can I upload at once? Several at a time, up to 50 MB each. For a full semester, send them unit by unit so each set of notes stays focused.
- Can it make notes from a password-protected PDF? Only if you give the password for a file you are allowed to open. It does not remove protection from files that are not yours.
- Are my course files private? Your files stay in your own agent's workspace and only your agent uses them. You can delete them any time.
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