Reasonabledoubts.

Passive repetition doesn't work. You need active spaced repetition: see the position, find the move, get feedback. ChessNotes uses FSRS-5, the most advanced spaced repetition algorithm available, to show you the right variations at the right time. Study 10-15 minutes a day and you'll retain more than you did in hours of book work. No paper flashcards, no manual Anki — everything in one flow.

Yes — ChessNotes is free forever, no credit card, no cap on variations. Chessable is great but most courses are paid and the personal repertoire feature is an afterthought. ChessNotes was built for people who want to build and train their own repertoire, not follow someone else's. Import free Lichess studies, analyze with built-in Stockfish 17, and run FSRS-5 drills without a subscription.

Every time you answer a position, the algorithm estimates how hard that move is for you and schedules the next review. Miss it, and it comes back soon. Nail it with confidence, and you won't see it for days or weeks. The result: you memorize hundreds of moves with minimal effort. ChessNotes implements FSRS-5, the same algorithm used by serious study apps, tuned for the chess domain.

FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler) is the next-generation algorithm that replaced Anki's SM-2. It models your personal forgetting curve instead of applying a flat schedule. For chess this matters: variations have wildly different difficulties and FSRS-5 adapts to that. Result: fewer pointless reviews, better long-term retention. ChessNotes is one of the first chess platforms to use it natively.

Yes. Connect your chess.com username and ChessNotes pulls your recent games, analyzes them with Stockfish 17, and surfaces your biggest blunders. You can add any of them to your repertoire with one click, and that position joins your review queue. It's like having a coach review your games every night and tell you "this mistake — study it."

Three ingredients: a clear repertoire, a drill system, a feedback loop. ChessNotes covers all three. Build the tree, drill it daily with the spaced repetition engine, then correct the real mistakes from your chess.com games. That's it — no 400-page books, no PGN files scattered across folders. One place, browser-based, works anywhere.

No. ChessNotes runs entirely in the browser: Stockfish 17 via WebAssembly, Lichess cloud eval when available, Firebase for syncing your repertoire across devices. Open chessnotes.app, create a free account, build or import a repertoire, start drilling. Works on desktop and mobile. No app store, no setup. Being a web app, updates happen automatically.

Really free, forever. No hidden premium tier, no cap on variations or drills. The project is built out of passion and runs on minimal cloud costs. If we add advanced features down the line we might introduce an optional paid plan, but the core (editor, FSRS drill, Stockfish, Lichess import) stays free. Written promise, visible on the public repo.

Roughly 1200 ELO and up. Below that, structured opening study has limited payoff — tactics and fundamentals matter more. From 1200 to 2200 ChessNotes is in its sweet spot: build a real repertoire, memorize it with FSRS, correct mistakes game by game. Above 2200 it stays useful as an organization and drilling tool, alongside coach work.

It works on mobile with a layout tuned for small screens: drill, board and sidebar all adapt. Fully offline isn't available yet — you need a connection for sync and Stockfish cloud — but the app is light and runs fine on 4G. We're evaluating a full offline mode for the future. For now, all you need is a browser tab and 5 minutes a day to see real progress.

Yes. Lichess study import is instant: paste the link, ChessNotes reads all variations, annotations and sidelines. Fastest way to get started. Generic PGN import is coming soon, so you can bring repertoires exported from Chessable, ChessBase or other tools. No lock-in: what you build stays yours, exportable as standard PGN any time.