Spares

Spaced Repetition System - A file-based note system built for programmers.

Spares was built to address the numerous drawbacks of Anki. See this for a more detailed comparison with Anki.

Warning

Spares is in alpha. Expect frequent breaking changes.

Features

Core Features

• File-based System: All notes are stored as individual plain text files, enabling easy searching with standard tools like ripgrep
• Multiple Markup Languages: Support for Markdown, LaTeX, and Typst notes
• Advanced Cloze System:
  • Customizable cloze delimiters (not limited to double curly brackets)
  • Automatic cloze numbering
• Flexible Architecture:
  • All cards are fundamentally cloze-based
  • Decks implemented as tags
  • Pluggable scheduler (FSRS built in)

Advanced Features

• Image Occlusion:
  • Integrated as a cloze type (not a separate note type)
  • Drawn in the web app's note editor
  • Support for interweaving image occlusion with text clozes
  • Hint display over image clozes
• Cross-note Referencing:
  • Keyword-based linking system
  • Support for partial references
  • Multiple source citations
• Tag Hierarchy: Tree-like structure for organizing notes
• LaTeX Integration:
  • File-based templates that automatically update
  • Background parallel rendering

Search and Scheduling

• Search Queries:
  • Query language with relative dates, review history fields and note links
  • Results ranked by relevance, with --explain to show how a query is read
  • Saved searches, synced across devices
• FSRS Scheduling:
  • Optimizer that fits FSRS's parameters to your review history (spares card optimize)
  • Load balancing of due dates across days
• Review Queue:
  • Daily limits, review order, presets by tag, sibling burying and leech handling, as in Anki
  • Cards held back until the notes they link to are learned

Sync

• Self-hosted Sync Server: Two-way sync that merges notes changed on both sides, tagging conflicts with sync-conflict
• Deployment: spares deploy sets up a VPS reached over Tailscale (see Deploying a Sync Server)

Interface and Tools

• CLI: Full-featured command-line interface, including reviewing
• Web App:
  • Installable on a phone, with offline reviewing
  • Note editor with Vim mode, image occlusion, image and audio uploads
  • Statistics graphs and a built-in manual
• Neovim Plugin: Tag and keyword completion (see nvim)
• Anki Migration: Easy import from Anki decks
• Customizable: Create your own parsers and workflows

Quick Start

See our Getting Started Guide.

Documentation

The manual is also in the web app, under Manual.

• Getting Started
• Deploying a Sync Server
• Concepts
• Workflows
• Comparison with Anki
• API docs, with every setting and how each part works: cargo doc --workspace --no-deps --document-private-items --open

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details.

License

This project is licensed under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT License (LICENSE-MIT) at your option.