study-flashcards

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name: study-flashcards description: >- Use this skill whenever the user provides source material (notes, slides, a document, a PDF, pasted text, or a web page) and asks to "create a guide based on this", make a study guide, make flashcards, turn it into a quiz, "quiz me on this", or otherwise study from that material. Produces source-grounded flashcards and a practice quiz, defaulting to an interactive HTML study app for "guide" requests unless the user asks for Word, PDF, printable, or plain text. Do NOT use for essay grading, open-ended tutoring, multi-week course design, or trivia quizzes with no source material.

Overview

Reads whatever study material the user provides — notes, a slide deck, a textbook chapter, a PDF, pasted text, or a referenced web page — and produces study aids grounded strictly in that source: a stack of flashcards (front/back) and a practice quiz with a separate answer key. Guide and study guide requests default to the bundled interactive HTML app. Nothing in the output goes beyond what the source material actually says.

When to Use

• The user uploads or references notes, slides, or a document and asks for flashcards, a quiz, or a study guide.
• The user says "create a guide based on this" or otherwise uses "guide" for source-grounded learning material.
• The user names an exam, certification, or class and wants practice material built from specific material they provide.
• The user asks to "quiz me on [topic]" right after sharing or pointing to a document.

When NOT to Use

• Full essay grading, open-ended Socratic tutoring, or free-form Q&A dialogue — use a general writing or tutoring skill instead.
• Building a complete curriculum, syllabus, or multi-week lesson plan — that's course design, not single-session study-aid generation.
• The user wants general knowledge quizzed with no source material of their own — this skill exists specifically to test recall of THEIR material, not trivia.

Core Instructions

Step 1: Locate the Source Material

• If the user attached or uploaded a file, read it directly — PDF, Word doc, slide deck, plain text, or pasted notes all count as source material.
• If the user points to a web page and you cannot open it in this environment, ask them to paste the text or attach the page as a file instead.
• If nothing is attached or pasted, ask the user to provide their notes or attach the file. Do not substitute general knowledge for material the user hasn't actually given you.
• If more than one file is available or the topic scope is unclear, confirm which material and which section/range to build from before generating anything.

Step 2: Extract Concepts

• Break the material into atomic facts: terms, definitions, formulas, dates, cause/effect relationships, steps in a process.
• One idea per flashcard — never bundle two facts into a single card.
• Group extracted concepts by the section or heading structure already present in the source.
• Keep a source pointer for each concept (page, slide number, or heading) so every card and quiz answer can be traced back to where it came from.

Step 3: Build the Flashcards

• Format: Front (a question, term, or prompt) → Back (a concise answer — ideally one sentence or phrase, not a paragraph).
• Prefer recall-testing phrasing ("What is…", "Why does…", "Define…", "What happens when…") over yes/no phrasing, which is easy to guess.
• Order cards so foundational concepts appear before concepts that depend on them.
• Scale card count to the actual material — roughly 10-30 cards for a chapter or lecture's worth of content. Do not pad with filler cards just to hit a number.

Step 4: Build the Quiz

• Mix formats: multiple-choice (four options, one correct answer), true/false, and 2-3 short-answer questions.
• Every question and every multiple-choice distractor must be grounded in the source material — never invent a fact, date, name, or number that isn't actually in it.
• Vary difficulty: include a few straightforward recall questions and a few that require connecting two concepts from the material.
• Do not place answers next to questions — the quiz should be usable as a real practice test.

Step 5: Choose the Delivery Format

• If the request says "guide" or "study guide", deliver the interactive HTML app by default.
• If the user explicitly requests Word, PDF, printable, markdown, plain text, or an in-chat response, honor that format instead.
• For a non-interactive text package, present flashcards first, then quiz questions with no answers inline, then a separate answer key with a source reference for each answer.
• If the source material is thin or incomplete for something the user specifically asked about, say so explicitly instead of filling the gap with invented content.

Step 6: Interactive HTML Delivery

• Use the bundled template at assets/flashcard-quiz-app.html when the user asks for a guide, study guide, interactive or digital experience, web app, or in-browser study/practice.
• Copy the template, then replace the STUDY_DATA object (clearly marked between STUDY DATA / END STUDY DATA comments near the top of the <script> block) with the actual generated flashcards and quiz — keep the exact same shape: { title, flashcards[], quiz[] }, where each flashcard is {id, front, back, topic, source} and each quiz item is {id, type: "mc"|"tf"|"short", question, options?, answer, source}. Give each flashcard a short, stable id (e.g. c1, c2) — the app uses it as the spaced-repetition storage key, so keep ids stable if the user asks you to regenerate or expand the same deck later.
• Short-answer (short) items are self-checked in the app: the learner sees the expected answer after submitting and marks themselves right or wrong. Write a concise model answer.
• Treat every generated string as untrusted text, because it comes from the user's source material. Serialize STUDY_DATA as JSON (e.g. JSON.stringify), then make it safe for an inline <script> by replacing every < with \u003c, and U+2028 / U+2029 with \u2028 / \u2029. Never hand-write values into the script, and never let a literal </script> or <!-- appear inside the data block.
• Keep the app logic below the END STUDY DATA marker unchanged when populating a guide. The bundled template already includes sandbox-safe progress storage; do not replace it with direct, unguarded localStorage access.
• Deliver the filled-in file as a single, self-contained HTML file — it needs no server, no internet connection, and no build step; opening it in a browser is enough.
• Before delivering, check that the replaced STUDY_DATA block is valid JavaScript, contains no raw < characters, matches the shape above, and that every quiz answer is valid for its type (an option index for mc, true/false for tf, text for short).
• If your environment offers an HTML preview or browser tool, also open the file in a sandboxed preview (without allow-same-origin) and confirm card flipping, Skip/Shuffle, Again/Good/Easy, quiz submission, and score display work without a storage error. If no preview is available, skip this step — do not fail the task — and tell the user to open the file in any browser to try it.
• Deliver the file using whatever file-output method your platform provides (a saved file, attachment, or download). If the platform cannot return files, paste the full populated HTML in a single code block and tell the user to save it with a .html extension.

Output

• Flashcards — numbered list or table, grouped by topic, strict Front/Back format.
• Quiz — numbered questions, mixed format, no inline answers.
• Answer key — separate section at the end; each answer cites its source location.
• Interactive guide (default for "guide" requests) — a single populated HTML file from assets/flashcard-quiz-app.html, with flip-card flashcards, spaced-repetition scheduling, a self-graded quiz, and a small progress dashboard.
• Length scales with the source: a two-page handout should yield far fewer cards than a 40-page chapter — never inflate to hit a target count.

Guardrails

• Never fabricate facts, numbers, names, or claims that aren't in the source material — flag gaps instead of guessing.
• Keep quiz answers separate from questions so the output works as a real practice test.
• If the source material conflicts with general/common knowledge, follow the source (it's what the user will likely be tested on) but note the discrepancy rather than silently overriding it.
• Every flashcard must test one specific, checkable fact — no vague or filler cards ("basic concepts," "general overview").
• If asked to quiz on material with no attached source, ask for the material rather than generating trivia from general knowledge.