How to make flashcards with Claude (and have it quiz you by voice)
Claude writes good flashcards. Paste a chapter and ask for twenty cards and you will get twenty reasonable ones in a few seconds. The problem is what happens next: the cards live in a chat, the chat scrolls away, and nothing ever asks you the questions again. This guide covers both halves — getting cards worth keeping out of Claude, and giving Claude somewhere to keep them so it can quiz you tomorrow, next week, and the week before the exam.
What a card should look like before you make twenty of them
Claude follows instructions closely, so the quality of the deck is mostly the quality of the ask. Three things make the difference between cards you will remember and cards you will delete:
- One fact per card. “Describe the cardiac conduction system” is a lecture prompt, not a card. “Which node is the heart's primary pacemaker?” is a card. If an answer needs more than a sentence, split it.
- A cue that has one right answer. Avoid yes/no questions and “what do you know about…”. Ask for the number, the name, the mechanism, the exception.
- Cloze deletions for anything with a number or a sequence. “The SA node fires at […] bpm” tests the fact without testing your ability to phrase a question.
A prompt that reliably produces this shape:
Read the cards before you study them. Claude occasionally invents a plausible number or merges two facts; two minutes of review on a fresh deck saves you from memorising a mistake for a month.
Two ways to keep the cards
Copy them into Anki
Ask Claude for the cards as a two-column, tab-separated list, save it as a text file, and use Anki's File → Import. This works and costs nothing. It also means the cards and the studying live in two different places: Claude cannot see what is due, cannot grade you, and every new deck is another export and import.
Give Claude a flashcard app it can use directly
Flash is a flashcard app that Claude connects to as a custom connector. Once it is attached, Claude creates the deck itself, writes the cards into your account, and can run a study session in the same conversation. The cards are yours: they sync to the web app, export back to Anki at any time, and stay scheduled whether or not you ever open Claude again.
Connecting Claude takes about a minute
- Create a free Flash account (no card required).
- In Claude, open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector and paste your Flash MCP address from the connect page. Claude asks you to sign in to Flash once, with your passkey, and shows an approval screen that names the app and where your access is going.
- Back in the chat, say “list my decks”. If Claude answers with your (empty) deck list, it is connected.
The same connector works in the Claude web app, the desktop app, and the phone app. For Claude Code there is a one-line terminal command on the Claude page.
What a voice session sounds like
Open voice mode and say “let's study cardiology”. Claude fetches the cards that are due today and asks the first one out loud. You answer in your own words. Claude compares your answer to the back of the card and tells you whether you got it, then rates the card Again, Hard, Good or Easy and records the review. The next card follows. A ten-card session takes two or three minutes, which is why it fits on a walk or while you cook.
Grading is deliberately strict. “Somewhere around a hundred” is not the same as “60 to 100 bpm”, and Claude will say so. That strictness is the point: a card you can half-answer is a card you do not know yet, and marking it Good would push it weeks into the future.
What FSRS does with those grades
Flash schedules every card with FSRS, the open-source spaced-repetition algorithm that Anki also offers. Each grade updates a model of how stable that memory is for you, and the card is scheduled for the day the model predicts you are about to forget it. Cards you know well disappear for weeks; cards you keep missing come back tomorrow. You do not configure anything. The practical result is fewer reviews for the same retention, which is the only thing that matters when you have three hundred cards and a shift tomorrow.
Frequently asked questions
Does this work in Claude Code?
Yes. claude mcp add --transport http flash followed by your Flash address adds the connector; /mcp inside Claude Code signs you in. Studying from a terminal is text-only, but card creation from a repository's docs or a paper you are reading works well.
Is it free?
Your first 1,000 cards are free with every feature, including voice study. Pro is $5 a month for unlimited cards. The server is also open source and free to self-host.
Can I get my cards back out?
Always. Export as an Anki .apkg or CSV from the web app on any plan.
Can Claude quiz me on my existing Anki decks?
Yes. Import the .apkg and the cards, cloze deletions, images and audio come across; Claude sees them like any other deck. If you are weighing the switch, the Anki comparison is honest about what you would give up.
What about ChatGPT or Grok?
Both connect the same way. ChatGPT needs a paid plan with Developer mode, and its voice mode does not yet run apps, so studying is typed or dictated; the ChatGPT guide covers the details. Grok's voice connector works much like Claude's.