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 editor, with drag & drop, zoom pan pinch and an automatic layout that reorganizes nodes every time you add a move. No text files, no manual versioning.
Every node is a move. Click it and the board opens with the exact position; add the next move directly from the board and the node is born in the tree at the right spot. Cycles, transpositions, repertoires with 400+ nodes — handled without memory blowups thanks to a custom layout engine.
The canvas is your whiteboard. You can anchor free-form text annotations next to the nodes — strategic ideas, middlegame plans, coach-style reminders — and drag them wherever you need. The entire canvas state is saved to Firestore and synced in real-time 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.
A 3500+ ELO engine runs right on the page you're looking at. No remote servers, no install, no plugins: Stockfish 17 is 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 Stockfish up, ChessNotes queries Lichess cloud eval: for common positions (openings, known theory) the result comes in under 30ms, with deep lines already computed and verified. 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 node order and transpositions. If the study has multiple chapters you can import them all at once, one per repertoire, with titles auto-generated from the chapter names. The imported PGN is saved both in compact form (for speed) and serialized as canvasData, so no information is lost in the conversion.
It's also the fastest way to test ChessNotes: find a public study on Lichess, import it, run a few drills and see if the method works for you. Without spending a minute typing moves.
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 goes through Stockfish 17 and blunders (loss >= 150cp relative to your ELO) are identified and indexed.
From the "Your Games" page you see blunders ordered by severity or by date. Click one, the position opens, you see the move you played and the right one, you read the engine evaluation. With one click you add the position to your repertoire: it becomes a node, Smart Drill starts quizzing you on it, and the mistake doesn't repeat.
It's the missing link in traditional courses: feedback on YOUR games, not a GM's. We don't tell you what to study — your own mistakes show you.
Every blunder becomes a node in your tree. It enters the FSRS cycle. It doesn't repeat.
Studying openings is an exercise that pays off over the long run. The problem is that short-term motivation drops, and after two weeks you find yourself skipping the drill. ChessNotes adds lightweight progression mechanics — XP for every correct move, daily streaks, unlockable levels — to turn practice into a habit that doesn't weigh on you.
Nothing invasive. Zero silly badges, zero spammy notifications. Just a streak counter visible in the sidebar, a daily goal calibrated to your study volume, and a Profile page showing your retention curve over time. If you miss a day the streak breaks — like Duolingo — but no drama: you rebuild it the following week.
XP is calibrated to reward precision over volume: a correct move in a hard position is worth more than ten repetitions on an easy line. The system accounts for the FSRS difficulty of the position and weights XP accordingly.
Build your repertoire as an actual variation tree. Drag & drop, zoom, annotations on every node. See everything at a glance.
The most advanced spaced repetition algorithm out there, calibrated on your moves. Reviews what you're forgetting, not what you already know.
Real-time engine analysis via WebAssembly. Zero install, zero server, zero waiting. 3500+ ELO evaluations while you study.
Paste a Lichess study link and it becomes your repertoire. Ready to drill in 10 seconds, annotations and sub-variations included.
Link your account and we find the worst mistakes from your games. Add them to your repertoire and stop repeating them.
We turn study into a habit. Daily goals, streaks, unlockable trophies. Motivation is no longer your problem.
Free. No card. No 7-day demo that expires. Open an account and you're in for good.