Cards#

Cards are what you interact with during daily study and review. A deck contains many cards; over time, reviewing them builds retention within that topic.

Each card belongs to exactly one fact in the deck. The fact supplies the content; the card decides which entries appear on the front versus the back and tracks your review schedule (due date, last review, hidden state, and so on).

Front and back#

Cards follow the familiar flashcard model: a front (prompt or question) and a back (answer or explanation). You try to recall the front before revealing the back—active recall that supports long-term memory.

Which entries land on each side is defined by the card’s layout (template). By default, the first entry is the front and all other entries are the back. You can add sibling cards from the same fact with a different layout—for example a reversed direction.

Content types#

Front and back can show text and, when your fact entries include them, images, audio, or video. That supports language learning, terminology, visual recognition, pronunciation, and listening practice—not only plain Q&A text.

Media comes from the fact’s entries (uploaded or linked in your content), not from separate card files.

Relation to facts#

You usually add facts first; Retentio creates cards from them. If a fact’s first entry is hello and its second is 你好, the default card is front hello, back 你好 (deck field names may appear as labels when you study).

You do not need to hand-build every card. Optional layouts let one fact spawn multiple cards (such as both translation directions). You can also add another card for an existing fact when you want an extra direction or split.

During study, Retentio selects the most urgent due card in the deck (optionally filtered by tag). Your rating after each review updates when that card will appear again.

Summary#

Cards are the study surface in Retentio: front/back layouts built from fact entries, with scheduling for spaced repetition. Organize content as facts, let the system generate cards, and review what is due to keep learning steady and structured.