Stillcraft / Apps / Scriptor
After a book, a lecture or a video, close it and write a page in your own words. The page fades along your own forgetting curve, and you bring the ink back by writing it again from memory, answering the questions on its margin or filling the words the mice ate. Understood pages earn an initial, vines, gold leaf and a seal. Free, no ads, no account, no network.
Android 8.0+ · Free · No internet permission · English & Русский
A codex for each book, video, article, podcast, lecture or course, begun with a preface of what you expect and questions to the source. Pages are laid out the Cornell way: questions on the margin, a golden line, a colophon. Pasted text goes aside as the author's words, and you can tell it aloud instead.
Each page fades along its own forgetting curve (FSRS). Restorations take turns: rewrite it from memory, answer the margin, fill the lacunae, redraw the miniature. What you missed shows in cinnabar, and your grade bends the curve.
Before you look, stake one to three candles on being right. Mistakes made with three candles go into the book of errors, and the scribe's eye shows how well your confidence matches what you know.
A novice asks why, for an example, how to tell it to a ten-year-old. On the margins: examples from your life, parables, a dispute with the author, a disputation of thesis and objections, and the seal of practice once you've used it.
Two bells a day, only when there's something to do: in the morning, recall what you wrote yesterday; before sleep, restore a few fading pages. Close a codex in one sentence and three words tooled on its spine.
A new scribe starts with ink alone. Later come miniatures drawn by hand, red threads between books with their map, the abbot's monthly exam of mixed questions, and the monastery of memory, where ideas wait in its places for a walk.
| Technique | In Scriptor |
|---|---|
| Generation effect | Pages in your own words; pasted text goes to quotations |
| Retrieval and spacing | Fading ink, restorations scheduled by FSRS |
| Varied retrieval | Recall, margin questions, lacunae and miniatures in turn |
| Pretesting, Cornell notes | The preface, questions to the source, the cue column, the colophon |
| Feynman technique | The novice who asks for plain words |
| Metacognition, hypercorrection | Candles staked before looking, the book of errors, the scribe's eye |
| Sleep consolidation | Compline before sleep, Matins in the morning |
| Interleaving | The abbot's exam: mixed questions, first tell which book |
| Method of loci | The monastery of memory and its walk |
On Xiaomi (MIUI / HyperOS), Huawei, Samsung and some other phones, allow Autostart for Scriptor and remove battery limits so Matins and Compline ring on time.
JDK 17+ (Android Studio's bundled JBR works) and the Android SDK. The initials, vines, candles, seals and the novice are drawn in Kotlin, nothing else to install.
git clone https://github.com/bigdevwhale/scriptor.git cd scriptor ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest # unit tests ./gradlew assembleDebug # app.scriptor.dev, installs next to a release ./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo # app.scriptor.demo, half a season in ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest -Prender # the screens, as PNGs
You don't copy facts onto cards; you explain a whole idea in your own words and later rebuild it from memory. The schedule is the same kind that flashcard apps use (FSRS), but what you practise is understanding, not one-line answers.
When you write a restoration, Scriptor compares it with the page word by word and marks what you left out, then suggests a grade. The last word is yours: you can also recall in your head and grade yourself.
It borrows the look and the words of a medieval scriptorium: codices, rubrics, Matins and Compline. Nothing in it asks you to pray; the hours are just a morning and an evening bell.
Settings → Backup saves everything, pages, margins, threads and the monastery, to one JSON file. Restore it on the new phone.
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Found a bug, missing a feature, or want it in your language? Tell us on GitHub.
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