I built a real-time voice-controlled Anki app. Here's why.
When I was studying for the MCAT, I still wanted to have a life. My girlfriend and I would go to different places, road trips, hikes, coffee shops, but I always needed to squeeze in my Anki cards. She'd end up reading them out to me while I drove or we walked around.
I also had this friend at UC Davis named Brian, and we would take practice tests together. In between sections, we'd quiz each other on certain concepts and help each other remember stuff better. It was honestly such a great collaborative learning experience.
At first, I thought these were just our weird little systems. But after talking to a bunch of other pre-med and med students, I realized this was actually a super common experience. Everyone had someone in their life helping them get through their reviews, or they were just missing out on doing things because they couldn't break away from their phone.
So I Built Something About It
After I started working with AI agents instead of going to medical school, I decided to build this thing for fun. RT Anki lets you study your flashcards hands-free using voice commands and audio feedback.
The demo above is synced to the MilesDown deck, which was my lifeline back when I was grinding for the MCAT. But here's the cool part, it accesses your actual Anki decks, not some watered-down version.
How It Actually Works
Since Anki decks are just SQL tables under the hood, you can point RT Anki directly to your decks and use cards filtered by tags. This means you can tackle those really specific, difficult concepts that would be a pain to solve manually in the future.
Everything is tied together, the AI can give you feedback, help you with mnemonics to remember concepts better, and adapt to how you're learning. It's like having that helpful person reading cards to you, but with a brain that actually understands what you're studying. I wanted to combine all these great collaborative learning experiences, the girlfriend reading cards, the study buddy sessions with Brian, into one accessible experience for everyone.
Want This for Someone You Know?
Right now, this is just a fun side project I built to scratch my own itch. But if you think someone in your life could use this, or you genuinely want it for yourself, I'd love to hear from you.
I'm seriously considering building this out into a proper hosted web app if there's enough interest. Hit me up if that sounds useful to you, I'm always down to build things that help people learn better while actually living their lives.
How It All Worked Out
The story has a pretty great ending. Brian and I both ended up getting 521s on the MCAT, and it was such an amazing feeling to celebrate that together after all those study sessions. Instead of going to medical school though, I decided to work for an AI startup. I figured I could do more good by applying my cross-domain knowledge in biology and statistics to help build better AI systems.
RT Anki became this fun side project that combines everything I learned, from the collaborative study sessions with Brian to understanding how people actually learn. It's my way of giving back to that whole pre-med community that taught me so much about persistence and finding creative solutions to impossible schedules.
And hey, drive safe out there. ✌️