Presentation

This tool aims to help provide an improved way to remembering new words via Flashcards by generating a new sentence per studied word at each study session. Thus it will make the study session closer to a real life situation where a same word is met in different context and sentenced at each time.

The idea is as follows: Given a word provided and due to be reviewed today on Anki, a new sentence using it in a certain context is generated. Additionally, a new audio could be generated for that sentence.

The learner could then study as followed:

Review each card by first being presented the full (new) sentence with the word highlighted.
Or listen to the audio of the sentence first, and see the pronunciation of the word being reviewed. Leaving that person to guess what the meaning of the word is.

Some considerations

Can it work locally or does it require an internet connection
What tool (GenAI) to use and what are the costs involved
How does that fit with the practice of sentence mining, if that mined sentence will get overwritten at the next study.

Compatibility

The focus is on the platform Anki. The front-end would probably be a chrome extension or perhaps a standalone webiste, as long as it can access the user's localhost urls.

A dedicated field for the sentence is necessary, as well as an input field with the word

Functionalities

Select a flashcard service

This tool has been built with offering multi flashcard service compatibility. Currently, only Anki is supported.

Configure service

Authenticate
Select decks to generate sentence for
Provide fields mapping (Word, Sentence) and language

Update sentences for due cards

Running this command will generate new sentences using the word meaningfully.

Local setup

Anki setup

Follow the steps below to set up locally this project

Download Anki App
Once downloaded, create a user and select "Import File" at the bottom.
Import to Anki the mock data available at: /local_setup/Mandarin_local_dev.apkg

Make sure to keep Anki running in the background while using this tool.

Environment setup

pip install -r requirements.txt

Misc.

Due to big difficulties with compatibility of the PyQt5 dependency of Anki's aqt package, it has been decided to implement the app using the http API (for now), and not make it an add on then...

Open questions

How to know the language of the word for which a sentence is meant to be generated
How to handle wrong/mistyped input words. Eg: "Convinient" for "Convenient"

Useful resources

Anki Add-ons docs: https://addon-docs.ankiweb.net/intro.html
Anki local server API - for local dev: https://github.com/FooSoft/anki-connect

Local setup notes

PyQt5 was not working due to missing qmake compiler. Solution:

install qt5 via brew "brew install qt5",
then add qt5 to path PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/qt@5/bin:$PATH"'
pip install PyQt5

early-riser18/anki_card_GenAI