Creating cards

Cards are the foundation of your learning. In Flashcard Motion they come about in two ways: you write them yourself, or you have them generated from your material. Both paths end in the same place — a preview you check before anything is saved.

The flow at a glance

1. Choose a mode – Create manually or AI-generated.
2. Choose a folder – that is where the cards go.
3. Produce cards – write them, or bring in material and have it generated.
4. Review the preview – look at every card, change it, keep it or discard it.
5. Save – only now do the cards land in your folder.

You can leave the process at any time with Cancel. Only what you confirm at the end is saved.

Creating manually

In manual mode you create cards yourself:

• Fill in Question and Answer. Both are required — without content the card is not added.
• Add puts the card into your list.
• You can create as many cards in a row as you like; the list always shows how many are ready.
• Show preview displays your collection as cards. There you can edit or delete cards before saving.

Good cards are short, unambiguous and ask about exactly one thing. Long paragraphs are harder to recall than a clear question with a brief answer.

Creating with AI

In AI mode you give the app material and it suggests cards from it.

• Paste text – add the material the cards should come from. The field shows how many characters your plan allows.
• Attach sources – alternatively, or in addition, attach files from your folder. If you have attached sources, you can use the text field to say what matters to you in particular.
• Card count – let the app decide the number, or specify a fixed amount.
• Generate starts the job.

Generation runs in the background. You can leave the page; the result waits for you.

What you see before starting

Before the job actually starts, the app shows you an estimate:

• how much usage to expect and what share of your monthly allowance that would be,
• how much is likely to remain afterwards,
• what the estimate is based on (amount of text, planned cards, pages from PDFs).

For very large jobs you have to explicitly confirm that you know the scope. If your allowance is not enough, the app tells you beforehand and you can reduce the scope.

While generation is running

Your jobs appear in a list with their status:

• Queued – accepted, but not started yet.
• Processing – the app is working on it.
• Completed – the preview is ready.
• Failed – with an explanation and the option to try again.

Remove clears a job away. If a job fails, the app tells you why: for instance that the material was too extensive, that generation took too long, or that no readable text could be extracted from the files.

Reviewing and saving cards

In the preview you decide what actually goes into your folder. You go through the cards one by one and can:

• read the question and reveal the answer,
• edit a card if wording or content does not fit,
• keep or skip a card,
• view the source excerpt the card was derived from,
• view all cards and manage your selection from the overview.

Every generated card carries a review status (such as reviewed, repaired or needs review). When the source is weak, the app points out that you should check the answer against your own material. You can filter by review and quality status to see the questionable cards first.

At the end you save the selected cards. If you want to keep nothing, discard the whole generation — that also deletes the cards that were not saved yet. Individual discarded cards can be restored beforehand.

Limits and things to know

• Your plan sets the ceiling – how much text, how many files and how many PDF pages one request may cover, and how much AI allowance you have per month. The app tells you before you start.
• The amount of material matters. Very large documents are processed in a limited way. The app tells you when pages were skipped or only partly evaluated.
• The quality of the source matters. Blurry scans or image-only PDFs are harder to turn into good cards.
• Reviewing is your job. Generated cards are suggestions. Check them before you study with them.

Managing cards

In a folder, under Cards, you find all cards of that folder and can maintain them:

• Edit – change question and answer. If the card came from a source, the source reference stays visible for checking.
• Duplicate – create a copy when you need it in two variants.
• Delete – remove individual cards.
• Several cards at once – in edit mode you collect changes and then save or discard them together. If you click elsewhere with unsaved changes, the app asks.
• Switch view – grid or list, whichever gives you a better overview.
• Grouping – cards are sorted by where they came from: created manually or from the learning chat.
• Export – your cards as a Markdown file for Obsidian or as a JSON file.
• Move – drag a card from the list into another folder in the sidebar if it belongs elsewhere.
• Start learning – goes straight into a study session.

Newly created cards are briefly marked New.

Common questions

Can I bring in cards from other apps? There is no automatic import from other learning programs. You bring your material in through texts, files and sources and have cards generated from it.

How many cards should I generate at once? Several small runs are better than one huge one. Smaller jobs finish faster, are easier to review and are gentler on your allowance.

Why were not all cards kept? Cards you skip or discard are not saved. Check in the preview whether any cards are still open.

What happens to cards I already rated if I change them? Ratings you already gave remain in place. Your change applies to the coming rounds.

Cards also come about in the learning chat — where is that? How to derive cards from a conversation there is described in Chat.