Harken (2021)
A beautiful spaced repetition flashcard app + integrated Chrome extension that helps you remember every article you read online with AI-generated questions.
Harken is a flashcard platform that uses a science-backed learning strategy called spaced repetition to help you remember the things you care about. Spaced repetition is a memorization technique where the duration between reviews increases as you learn, allowing you to efficiently remember anything.
Remember more, in less time
Forgetting what you learn is a common problem. I've experienced this firsthand—I spend hours reading books, watching videos, and taking classes, just to forget what I learned a few months later. In general, the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve shows that people forget most of what they learn in just a few days. Today, people waste billions of dollars and countless hours every year on classes and books that they end up forgetting. Harken aims to fix this.
We built Harken as an alternative to existing spaced repetition apps like Anki. My engineering partner, Matt, and I discovered Anki in 2020 and quickly become daily users—however, we were frustrated by the confusing user experience, lack of editing features, and need to constantly sync between desktop and mobile. Harken is the spaced repetition app we wish existed. If you're already an Anki user, don't worry—you can easily import your decks into Harken in just a few seconds.
Although Harken is just a side project, it's been amazing to hear from people using it to remember all kinds of things. Here's what one user sent to me about a year after we launched Harken:
“I have been using Harken to study for my university courses and I absolutely LOVE IT. I have ADHD and Anki overwhelmed my brain every time I tried to use it. Harken is just so easy to use and I can already tell how much more information I’m able to remember!! Thank you <3 I’m very glad I found this app!!”
Never forget what you read online again
While Harken's flashcard platform was helpful, one thing that was very annoying was adding flashcards. It can take a long time to come up with good questions and answers for new topics, and it's often a tedious task.
To help with this problem, we built a simple Chrome extension for Harken that can be used to quiz yourself on any article you're reading online—and then add the questions you like to your Harken deck, with one click. The extension uses AI to read the entire article, and then add relevant questions and answers throughout the article.
Since most people are learning online now, this takes away the monotonous problem of adding flashcards about a topic you're studying, and instead puts the focus back on learning and understanding (and then remembering, through the original Harken platform).
In the future, we’d love to integrate Harken with online courses as well through AI that interprets video—if memorization can be integrated seamlessly, we could create classes that are designed so you’ll never forget them.
