Introduction.md

Introduction To ARMS

ARMS is an advanced personal note taking + review management system.

  • advanced:

    • Bayesian modelling that accounts for uncertainty

    • Advanced markdown + LaTeX support

    • An original, small note taking DSL that combines note taking and flashcard generation (no need to waste double amount of time writing notes and then making flashcards separately)

  • personal note taking:

    • Even if you don’t use cards, you can use ARMS to keep your notes and view them nicely rendered. Literal markdown and LaTeX format work out of the box.

    • Turn them into cards at any time easily.

  • review management system:

    • spaced repetition flashcards with scheduling

    • detailed statistics and progress tracking

    • potential optimization of your learning plan based on your goals and time spent recalling

You can:

  • keep notes as files (.arms, .md, .tex)
  • generate cards from notes
  • study cards with spaced repetition (Forgot / Hard / Good / Easy)
  • see scheduling & statistics on your Profile

This wiki is public documentation for using the site.

Core concepts

Notes (files)

Notes are stored as files. They are per-user (your notes are not mixed with other users).

Supported file types:

  • .arms — Markdown content + ARMS tags
  • .md — Markdown content + ARMS tags
  • .tex — LaTeX content + ARMS tags

In practice: you almost write normal Markdown/LaTeX, and add special ARMS blocks when you want cards.

Cards (stable identity)

Card is the minimal unit of review management. When you use Study, you study cards, not notes.

Each card has a UUID (for example c52b1550-18da-41b2-8ca7-83850bc0444c).

Why this matters:

  • if you export a note, move it, edit it, then import/generate again later, the same card UUID means the system can treat it as “the same card”
  • study history and scheduling can stay attached to that identity

Decks

Decks are just collections of cards. A card can belong to multiple decks.

Study & scheduling

When you study, you choose how well you recalled:

  • Forgot — failed recall
  • Hard — weak failure / difficult recall
  • Good — normal successful recall
  • Easy — very easy successful recall

ARMS updates your scheduling state based on your study history.

Recommended workflow (two ways)

A) Quick manual cards (one-off)

  1. Go to Decks

  2. Create a deck

  3. Open the deck and use “Add a card”

B) Notes-first (recommended)

  1. Go to Notes

  2. Create a note (choose Markdown or LaTeX format)

  3. Using ARMS tags to mark your notes, specify how cards should be generated

  4. Click “Generate preview”

  5. Confirm generation (optionally choose a deck destination)

See also:

ARMS is made by eiko with passion using Haskell. I use this system myself owo, hope you enjoy it too!