Daily review, Today plan, and FSRS
How the Today plan decides what you study, how FSRS scheduling works, what the ratings mean, and how the goal switcher scopes your queue.
Reviewing is the product. Everything else — generation, goals, sync — exists to feed a few focused minutes of review a day.
The Today plan
Today looks at your cards and picks one next action:
- Review — cards that are due in your focused goal. This always comes first: due cards are the ones about to be forgotten.
- Learn — if nothing is due, it introduces new cards from your focused goal's materials.
- Import — if you have no cards yet, it points you to create some.
- Rest — everything's done. Come back tomorrow; the schedule is working.
The goal switcher
If you have more than one goal, the pill at the top of Today switches which goal you're focused on. The plan — both review and learn — is scoped to that goal, so exam prep doesn't drown your language practice.
Due cards in other goals show as a "+N more" hint under the plan (with a red dot on the switcher). Click it to jump to the goal that needs attention. Your focused goal is remembered per browser.
How FSRS schedules cards
GuruOwl schedules with FSRS — a modern spaced-repetition algorithm that models each card's memory state (difficulty, stability, retrievability) instead of applying one fixed 1980s formula to everyone. In practice: cards you know well come back at longer and longer intervals; cards you struggle with come back sooner. You review right before you'd forget — the minimum work that keeps material in your head. (Deep dive: FSRS vs SM-2.)
When you answer a card, rate honestly:
- Again — didn't recall it. It comes back soon. This is information, not failure.
- Hard / Good / Easy — recalled with varying effort; the interval scales accordingly.
Rating "Good" on cards you actually missed teaches the scheduler lies, and it will quietly stop working for you.
Streaks and stats
Reviewing on consecutive days builds your streak (shown on Today). Stats shows reviews per day, retention, and how your collection is maturing. The streak is motivation; the schedule is what does the remembering — reviews synced from the iOS app count too.
If the queue feels too big
A pile-up usually means too many new cards were introduced at once. Let the due queue drain for a few days before learning more — the plan already orders this correctly (review before learn). Deleting cards you don't actually care about is also legitimate deck hygiene, not cheating.