Why turn a PDF into flashcards instead of rereading?
Rereading feels productive, but it's one of the least effective study techniques. Karpicke and Roediger's research shows that testing yourself (active recall) boosts retention by 50 to 80% over plain rereading. Flashcards are the simplest way to flip passive reading into active retrieval.
The catch: creating 200 cards from a 300-page textbook takes hours. This is exactly the kind of task AI is great at — pulling out important concepts, phrasing clear questions, structuring answers. Diane does this in under a minute.
Which PDFs work best
Diane handles any readable PDF: university lectures, textbooks, slide decks, scientific papers, school manuals, ebooks. If the text is selectable, the AI can analyze it. For scanned PDFs (page photos), Diane runs OCR before generation.
Card formats generated
The AI picks the right shape for each piece of content: Q&A for definitions and concepts, cloze (fill-in-the-blank) for lists, dates and names, MCQ for nuances and common traps, true/false to test fine understanding.
You can regenerate a card you don't like, or edit it manually. Diane learns from your edits over time.
Spaced repetition is what actually works
Having cards isn't enough, you need to review them at the right time. FSRS-5 (used by Diane) is one of the most advanced scheduling algorithms available: it predicts when you're about to forget each card and shows it just before. That beats fixed intervals like Quizlet or Brainscape, and it's the modern evolution of Anki's classic algorithm.
In practice, a 200-card deck from a PDF works out to about 20 reviews per day for a week, then it spaces out: every 3 days, every week, every month. By exam time, you know your material without cramming.
Anki export and compatibility
If you already use Anki, Diane exports any generated deck to .csv. You get all your cards in your usual Anki client, no data lost. The other way works too: import an existing Anki deck and let FSRS-5 and AI enrich your cards.
When AI gets it wrong
Honest take: AI can occasionally phrase a question badly or duplicate a card. Diane always shows the source (page number and quoted snippet) for each card, so you can verify in one click. Bad cards take seconds to delete or rewrite.
The win over fully manual cards: you start from a useful draft instead of a blank page. The time saved stays massive even if you fix 10% of the cards.