Not a grab bag of features. A coherent method — build, train, correct — with the right tools for each stage. What follows is the full manual.
Your repertoire is a branching structure — variations, sub-variations, alternative lines — not a list of PGN files. ChessNotes gives you a real tree on a zoomable canvas, with an automatic layout that redraws itself every time you add a move. No text files, no manual versioning, no dragging nodes around.
You build it by playing. Double-click a node and the board opens on that exact position; make a move and a new branch is born in the right spot. Play a move that already exists somewhere and the lines merge — transpositions become a single node, so you map a position once and it counts everywhere it occurs. Repertoires with 400+ nodes stay smooth thanks to a custom layout engine.
The canvas is your whiteboard. Anchor free-form text annotations next to the nodes — strategic ideas, middlegame plans, coach-style reminders — and drag them wherever you need. Everything is saved as portable PGN and synced across browser, tablet and mobile.
Passive repetition (reopen the study, read, close) leaves no trace. You need active recall: see the position, find the move, get immediate feedback. ChessNotes' Smart Drill does exactly that, calibrated with FSRS-5 — the latest-generation spaced repetition algorithm, the same one used by the most demanding Anki communities.
For every move in your repertoire FSRS-5 tracks stability, difficulty and next review date. When you open the drill, it shows you only what's about to slip out of memory — not moves you remember perfectly, not lines you've never seen. A priority queue estimates the forgetting risk and orders positions from most urgent to least.
The trainer tolerates multi-move sequences: if a variation has 8 half-moves before it wraps up, the drill asks them one at a time and stops the moment you miss. Feedback is immediate, visible on the board, with an accent arrow for the right move and a rose arrow for yours. No modal, no pop-up.
Full-strength Stockfish 17 with NNUE runs right on the page you're looking at. No remote servers, no install, no plugins: it's compiled to WebAssembly and loaded lazily when you open the board. The main thread stays free, the engine thinks on a dedicated Web Worker, values stream in while you think about your move.
Before waking the local engine, ChessNotes queries Lichess cloud eval: for common positions (openings, known theory) the deep, already-computed evaluation comes back near-instantly. Only when the position is truly new does the local engine kick in, with a synced eval bar and depth growing visibly on screen.
The integration is quiet. The eval bar appears next to the board, the best variations update in real-time, you can play against the engine to test a line. All without leaving the study flow, without opening a second tool.
You have a public Lichess study with your repertoire? Paste the link and in ten seconds it's on your canvas: main variations, sub-variations, text annotations, NAGs and comments. ChessNotes uses the official Lichess API, not a fragile scraper, so everything you see on lichess.org/study lands faithfully in ChessNotes.
The parser rebuilds the original tree respecting move order and transpositions — positions that recur merge into a single node. Multi-chapter studies graft together onto one canvas, with titles taken from the chapter names. You can also search Lichess's most popular studies by name without leaving ChessNotes, with a quality chip (e.g. "891 moves · 38 chapters" vs "intro") so you import a real repertoire, not a teaser.
Already have a repertoire elsewhere? Import any standard PGN file — exports from Chessable, ChessBase, SCID or your own files all work. It's the fastest way to test ChessNotes: bring a study in, run a few drills, see if the method clicks. Without typing a single move.
Everything you study means little if you don't reflect on the mistakes you actually make. ChessNotes connects to your Chess.com account and downloads your recent games — up to 6,000 — in the background. Every game is replayed through Stockfish 17, which evaluates the position before and after each of your moves and flags the real centipawn drops (mistakes from 150cp, blunders from 300cp), skipping the opening and already-decided positions.
From the "Your Games" page you see blunders ordered worst-first. Click one, the position opens, you see the move you played and the move you should have, with the engine evaluation. One click adds the position to your repertoire: it becomes a node, Smart Drill starts quizzing you on it, and the mistake stops repeating.
There's more than blunders: at any position you can see your own real record — W/D/L, your most-played moves, the average rating you beat versus the one you lost to. Feedback on YOUR games, not a GM's.
Every blunder becomes a node in your tree. It enters the FSRS cycle. It doesn't repeat.
Studying openings pays off over the long run, but short-term motivation drops and after two weeks you skip the drill. ChessNotes adds lightweight progression — XP for every correct move, levels, daily streaks — to turn practice into a habit that doesn't weigh on you.
XP rewards sharpness: a fast, confident answer is worth more than a slow one, and a combo multiplier builds as you string correct moves together. Your level is your total XP turned into a clean curve (level 5 ≈ 1,600 XP, level 10 ≈ 8,100). A daily goal, set to your own volume, keeps the streak alive.
Miss a day and the streak would normally break — but you earn a freeze token every seven-day run (up to three) that saves it automatically. And the Trophy Room holds 29 achievements: streak and volume milestones, mastery badges, and opening-specific ones like Najdorf Master, London Loyalist and Caro-Kann Comfort that unlock when you train those repertoires.
Your repertoire is a visual tree you grow by playing moves on a board — no manual node wiring. Lines that transpose merge into one node, so you map it once. Pan, zoom, annotate every position.
A real FSRS-5 scheduler quizzes you only on the positions you're about to forget — not the ones you already know. Keep two replies to a move and it accepts either one.
Full-strength Stockfish 17 (NNUE) runs locally via WebAssembly — no install, no server. It asks Lichess's deep cloud eval first, so known positions evaluate instantly.
Search Lichess's most popular studies by name and turn any of them into a drillable tree in two clicks — every variation, comment and sideline intact. Generic PGN import works too.
Connect your Chess.com username and we replay your games through Stockfish to surface your worst real blunders, worst-first — with the move you should have played. Add any to your repertoire in one click.
29 trophies (including opening-specific ones like Najdorf Master), streaks with freeze tokens to protect a hot run, and a combo XP multiplier. Study becomes a daily habit.
Free. No card. No 7-day demo that expires. Open an account and you're in for good.