Ostella

Ostella — Conversational Spaced Repetition for Your Anki Deck

Ostella transforms standard flashcard flipping into an active, Socratic study session. Built specifically for medical students (optimized for the AnKing Overhaul and USMLE Step 1 & Step 2), Ostella is a conversational spaced repetition agent that grounds every discussion in your personal Anki collection.

Instead of passively reviewing isolated cards, you talk through clinical scenarios, disease mechanisms, and patient management just like you would with an attending physician. Ostella pulls the exact cards from your deck that back the discussion, tests your recall, and updates your spaced repetition schedule based on what you actually understand.

Key Features

1. Conversational Spaced Repetition Grounded in Your Cards

• Deck-Grounded Tutoring: Ostella anchors every response to your cards. Facts backed by your deck are underlined—click any underline to inspect the underlying Anki card, its tags, and your personal review history.
• Intelligent Recall Grading: As you answer the agent's questions and explain clinical concepts, Ostella evaluates your statements against your deck's specific facts. It suggests Anki ratings (Again, Hard, Good, Easy) that you confirm with a single click before anything is written to your FSRS scheduler.
• Review & Add Cards Directly in Chat: Unsuspend relevant cards, review in-chat flashcards, or create new cards on the fly without leaving the conversation.
• Contradiction Guardrails: The agent automatically cross-checks its own answers against your collection, marking any point where your deck contradicts the conversation with a wavy underline.

2. PDF Handout Mapping: Cut Study Time & Pinpoint Board Relevance

Medical students waste dozens of hours every block manually searching AnKing to answer one question: "Is this lecture material actually high-yield for Step 1/2, or is it school-specific minutiae?"

• Instant Curriculum-to-Deck Mapping: Drop in your lecture PDF or syllabus. Ostella rapidly cross-references every slide and paragraph against your entire deck, saving hours spent manually searching for cards.
• Filter Board Relevance: Instantly see which lecture facts are already covered in high-yield board decks and which ones are missing.
• Attach Handout Screenshots to Card Backs: With one click, attach screenshots or excerpts of lecture diagrams directly to the back of the corresponding cards (e.g. Lecture Notes or Extra fields). When the card comes up for review later, you get immediate visual context from your class slides.

3. Natural Language & Vignette Search

• Search by Clinical Scenario: No more guessing rigid tag hierarchies or exact card keywords. Paste full USMLE-style question vignettes or describe what you want to study in plain English (e.g., "young athlete who collapsed with systolic murmur increasing on Valsalva").
• Concept Retrieval: Ostella uses a local semantic search engine to instantly surface the relevant cards for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, even if your query doesn't match the card's exact phrasing.

4. Browser Mode: Side-Panel Tutoring for Web & Question Banks

• Study Beside Your Browser: Using the companion Chrome / Edge side panel extension, Ostella sits directly next to your question banks, lecture portals, and online references.
• One-Click Context Capture: Use Alt+Shift+P or click to bring the active webpage or practice question stem directly into Ostella.
• Targeted Remediation & Unsuspending: Have the agent tutor you through why you missed a question, break down the pathophysiology, and unsuspend the relevant cards immediately so they enter your daily review queue.

5. Private Local Voice Dictation

• Talk Through Your Thought Process: Built-in speech-to-text runs 100% locally on your computer via whisper.cpp. Fast, private, and tuned for medical terminology—no voice audio is ever uploaded to the cloud.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Ctrl+Shift+T: Open the Ostella study chat in Anki
• F8: Capture foreground window and attach to chat (Windows)
• Shift+F8: Drag-to-select screen region capture
• Alt+Shift+O: Open Chrome / Edge browser side panel
• Alt+Shift+P: Attach active browser page to Ostella

Pricing & Plans

• Ostella Pro — $10 / month: Full conversational tutor access, recall grading, and PDF handout mapping (up to 40 daily AI credits / 600 monthly credits; 1 credit = 1 cent of AI usage). Subscribe or manage anytime directly in the app via secure Stripe Checkout.
• Free Starter Trial & Local Search: Start with 10 free AI credits (no code needed; a beta access code adds more) to test conversational tutoring and handout mapping on your deck. Local semantic deck search and card browsing remain free on your computer without AI generation.

How to Get Started

1. Install: Go to Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons... in Anki, paste this code, and restart Anki.
2. Automatic Setup: Click Ostella in Anki's top bar or press Ctrl+Shift+T. Click Set up Ostella. Ostella downloads an isolated private engine (~300 MB) into its own folder. No external Python installation or command-line configuration required.
3. Build Search Index: In Account and setup, click Build my search index to index your deck locally for semantic search.
4. Activate: In Account & Setup, start your free trial, enter an access code, or click Subscribe for $10/month to unlock Ostella Pro.

Privacy & Disclaimers

• Data Privacy: Your Anki collection, deck database, and chat history stay on your local computer. When you chat or use study features, your message and the relevant card excerpts pass through Ostella's server to Google's paid Gemini API (which Google states is not used to train its models) or to Lithos (GLM 5.3), which states it keeps no inputs or outputs after processing (zero data retention) but whose terms do not say whether it trains models on inputs. To pick relevant cards for broad questions, short snippets (your message up to 600 characters, card text up to 200 characters each) are also sent via OpenRouter to Liquid AI, whose published terms allow it to use submitted content to improve its models. Optional usage telemetry (weekly counts only) is off by default and can be turned on in Account. Read the full notice in the app.
• Medical Disclaimer: Ostella is an educational study aid, NOT a medical device, diagnostic tool, or clinical reference. AI can make mistakes; always verify clinical decisions with primary medical guidelines. Never enter protected health information (PHI) or patient identifiers.
• Independent Project: Ostella is developed independently and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anki, AnKing, AnkiHub, Google, or the NBME.

Support & Feedback: Reach us directly through the built-in Feedback button or at zkoatley@gmail.com.