True Recall (Obsidian Plugin)
The Problem
You take notes. You highlight. You organize everything into folders. And then you never look at it again.
Your Obsidian vault grows into a graveyard of forgotten knowledge. The few things you do revisit, you’ve already forgotten the context for. Meanwhile, tools like Anki exist — but they live in a completely separate app. You end up context-switching between your notes and your flashcards, and the connection between what you learned and where you learned it is lost.
True Recall fixes this by bringing spaced repetition directly inside Obsidian. Every flashcard lives in the note it came from. No context switching. No separate app. No graveyard.
How It Works
Select any text in your note, click the toolbar, and AI generates flashcards from it — Basic (Q&A), Cloze (fill-in-the-blank), or Reversed (bidirectional). Each card is linked back to the exact passage it was created from, so you always have context.
When it’s time to review, True Recall uses FSRS v6 — the most advanced open-source spaced repetition algorithm available. It models three concepts per card: stability (how long until you forget), difficulty (0–10 scale), and retrievability (current recall probability). Research shows it outperforms Anki’s classic SM-2 by 30–40%.
Key Features
AI Card Generation
Select text in any note, click “Flashcards” in the toolbar, and AI intelligently creates the right type of card. It tracks the source text — every card links back to the passage it was generated from. You can also use Quick+ for instant basic cards without AI processing.
Image Occlusion with AI Auto-Detection
Drop an image in your note, select it, and AI automatically detects labels, diagrams, formulas, and boundaries. Each detected region becomes a separate flashcard. You can also manually draw rectangles, ellipses, or polygons. Works great with anatomy diagrams, labeled charts, and maps.
Type-in Mode with AI Grading
Instead of just flipping cards, type your answer. AI evaluates meaning, not exact wording — it understands synonyms, paraphrases, and partial answers. There’s also a diff mode for character-by-character comparison when precision matters.
Dashboard & Analytics
The command center shows your projects, due cards, study heatmap, and forecasts. You can organize notes into projects (hierarchically), track progress with a GitHub-style contribution graph, and start study sessions directly from the dashboard. There are also 23+ inline widgets you can embed anywhere in your notes — dashboards, heatmaps, forecasts, streak counters, and more.
Workload Management
True Recall doesn’t just schedule cards — it manages your study load. Load balancing smooths out daily review counts so you don’t get spikes. Easy days let you set lighter reviews on weekends. Scheduled breaks redistribute reviews around vacations. And leech detection flags cards you keep failing so you can rewrite them instead of grinding through bad flashcards.
How It Compares
| True Recall | Anki | RemNote | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where cards live | Inside your Obsidian notes | Separate app | Web-based app |
| Algorithm | FSRS v6 (21 trainable params) | SM-2 (FSRS optional) | SM-2 |
| AI card generation | Built-in | No | Limited |
| Image occlusion | AI auto-detection | Manual only | No |
| Answer grading | AI semantic | Self-graded | Self-graded |
| Workload tools | Load balance, easy days, breaks | Basic | No |
| Inline analytics | 23+ embeddable widgets | Add-ons required | Limited |
Under the Hood
- Local-first: All data lives in a SQLite database (
.true-recall/true-recall.db) inside your vault. Nothing leaves your machine unless you opt into cloud sync. - Anki compatible: Full
.apkgimport and export. Note types, media, scheduling metadata — everything transfers. - Cloud sync: Coming soon. Cross-device synchronization with automatic conflict resolution.
- Configurable: Multiple FSRS presets (e.g., “Intensive” for exams, “Casual” for long-term learning), customizable AI prompts, 25+ keyboard shortcuts, and per-project scheduling settings.