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User Guide

Everything you need to know to get started with Ulearn AI and make the most of your study time.

1. Getting Started

Ulearn AI has two parts that work together:

• Chrome Extension — auto-generates quizzes while you watch YouTube videos.
• Web App (ulearnai.org/app) — your dashboard for managing decks, reviewing cards with spaced repetition, exploring courses from other users, and publishing your own.

You can use either one independently, but they’re most powerful together: the extension creates quiz cards from videos, and the web app organizes and schedules your reviews.

Quick setup

1. Install the Ulearn Chrome Extension from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Open ulearnai.org/app and create an account (email + password).
3. Choose a display name — this is what other users see if you publish a course. Your email is never shown.
4. Sign in with the same account on the extension (click the Ulearn icon in Chrome → open the dashboard → sign in).
5. Watch a YouTube video. Near the end, the extension pauses and quizzes you. Your answers save to your dashboard automatically.

2. Chrome Extension — YouTube Quizzes

How it works

When you watch a video on YouTube with the extension installed, Ulearn reads the video’s transcript (if captions are available) and generates 5 multiple-choice questions using AI. The quiz appears automatically near the end of the video.

When does the quiz appear?

• With captions: the quiz fires when the transcript ends (not at a fixed percentage). If the transcript runs to the very end of the video, it fires 3 seconds before the end so YouTube can’t autoplay the next video first.
• Without captions: the quiz fires at 95% of the video.
• Clicking to another video: if you’ve watched at least 50% and 60+ seconds, Ulearn may quiz you before navigating away.

During the quiz

• Answer all questions correctly to resume the video. Wrong answers come back later in the same quiz — you can’t move on until every question is right.
• Each question has 4 options (A–D). The correct answer varies across questions.
• Each question also has a Multiple Choice / Free Response toggle — pick the mode you prefer on the fly.
• A progress counter shows N/5 correct so you can see how close you are to finishing.
• After finishing, you can Retake Quiz, Copy Results, or Save to Dashboard.
• Click any timestamp link next to a question to jump to the part of the video where the answer was mentioned.

Skip options

• Skip Transcript — generates a faster, simpler quiz based on the video title and description instead of the full transcript.
• Don’t need quiz — dismisses the overlay and resumes the video. No quiz is saved.

Ads

The extension ignores YouTube ads. It won’t fire a quiz during a pre-roll or mid-roll ad.

Long videos (20+ minutes)

For videos 20 minutes or longer, sending the entire transcript to the AI at once would be slow and produce less focused questions. Instead, Ulearn breaks the video into 10-minute segments and generates 5 questions per segment. You can choose between two modes in Settings (gear icon on the dashboard):

• Split mode (default) — the video pauses every 10 minutes for a 5-question quiz covering just that segment. After you finish, the video resumes and you’ll be quizzed again at the next 10-minute mark. A final quiz covers whatever remains at the end.
• Combine mode — the video plays uninterrupted while the AI quietly generates questions for each 10-minute segment in the background. At the end of the video, all the questions are merged into one large quiz. For example, a 30-minute video produces 15 questions (3 segments × 5 each).

Both modes send the same amount of transcript to the AI (10 minutes per call) — the difference is only whether you’re quizzed during the video or all at the end.

3. Web App Dashboard

Open ulearnai.org/app and sign in. The dashboard has four main tabs:

• Dashboard — overview of your study progress, upcoming reviews, and SRS stage breakdown.
• Reviews — cards that are due for review right now, grouped by deck. Start a review session here.
• Decks — all your decks (both from YouTube quizzes and manually created). Tap a deck to see its cards, edit them, or start a review.
• Explore — browse and import public courses published by other Ulearn users.
• Create — build a new deck from scratch (add a name, description, and cards manually).

4. Decks & Cards

How decks are created

• Automatically from YouTube quizzes — when the extension generates a quiz and you finish it, the 5 question-answer pairs are saved as cards in a deck named after the video’s category (e.g., “Biology”, “Programming”). Each video’s cards are grouped into a “pile” inside the deck.
• Manually from the Create tab — build your own deck with custom front/back cards.
• Imported from Explore — add a public course and it becomes a regular deck in your library.

Inside a deck

Tap a deck on the Decks tab to see its detail view:

• Piles — groups of cards, usually one per YouTube video. Each pile shows a card count, how many are due, and a ▶ YouTube link to open the source video in a new tab.
• Cards — expand a pile to see individual cards. Each card shows its front (question) and back (answer). You can delete individual cards or entire piles.
• Start Review — begins an SRS review session for all due cards in that deck.

Organizing decks — move, rename, split

YouTube quizzes are automatically grouped by the AI-detected subject (e.g., “Economics”). Over time, a single deck can grow large. You can reorganize:

• Move a pile to another deck — click the ⇄ (move) button on any pile header. A dropdown shows all your other decks plus a “+ New deck...” option. Selecting one moves the pile’s cards and metadata instantly. Use this to split a large “Economics” deck into “Macroeconomics” and “Microeconomics”.
• Rename a deck — click Rename in the deck-detail header to change the deck’s name.

5. AI Generate — Build a Deck from Text

On the Create page, click AI Generate to build cards automatically from a block of source text (notes, a textbook page, transcript, anything). This is separate from the YouTube auto-quiz — it’s for when you already have the material and want flashcards out of it.

Controls

• Subject — a short name like “Spanish verbs” or “Cell biology”. Helps the AI focus.
• Source text — paste your notes here. The more specific, the better the questions.
• Number of cards — pick between 1 and 50 cards per batch. The field won’t let you type anything outside that range.
• Question type — factual, conceptual, vocabulary (WaniKani-style for language learning), or fill-in-the-blank.
• Card mode — MCQ, free response, or both.
• Quality toggles — tick “no references to visuals” if your source mentions “see figure 1” (the AI rephrases to stand-alone questions), or “equal-length answer choices” to avoid the “longest answer is always correct” tell.

What happens after

Generated cards appear in the card-editor list. You can tweak any of them before saving, delete ones you don’t like, or hit Save to add them to the deck you’re building.

6. Spaced Repetition & Reviewing

Ulearn uses a 10-stage spaced repetition system (SRS) to schedule your reviews. New cards start at Stage 0 and advance each time you answer correctly. Getting a card wrong drops it back to an earlier stage.

Owl stages

Cards advance through five visual stages, each represented by an owl character on your dashboard’s SRS Stages panel:

• Hatchling — stages 1–4, reviewed within 4 hours to 3 days
• Fledgling — stages 5–6, reviewed within 1–2 weeks
• Hunter — stage 7, reviewed monthly
• Sage Owl — stage 8, reviewed every 4 months
• Elder Owl — stage 9, near-mastery, occasional refreshers

Getting a card wrong drops it back an earlier stage. Clicking a stage tile expands the list of cards currently at that level.

Review modes

• Multiple Choice (MCQ) — pick from 4 options. Correct advances the card; wrong drops it back.
• Free Response — type your answer. AI grades it on a 0–100 scale with feedback. The passing score is configurable in Settings → Free Response Grading → Pass threshold (default 70%, adjustable between 30% and 95%).

You can switch between MCQ and Free Response per card or per deck from the deck settings.

Browsing cards — answers stay hidden

When you’re browsing your cards — in the Reviews list, the SRS Stages view, or the Card Details popup — only the question shows. Answers are hidden behind a Show answer button so you can mentally quiz yourself before peeking. This matches how real spaced-repetition practice works: retrieve first, then check.

Actual review sessions (where the card is graded) still show the answer after you submit, as normal.

Disputing a question

If you think a question is wrong or unfair, tap the flag icon during a review to open the AI Dispute modal. The AI re-evaluates the question and your answer, and may recommend deleting the card.

7. Feynman Mode

Feynman Mode swaps multiple-choice questions for a single prompt: “Explain what this video taught, in your own words.” You type your explanation, the AI grades it, and it tells you exactly which concepts you nailed and which ones you missed — with links back to the relevant timestamps in the video.

Turning it on

Open Settings → Feynman Mode on the Chrome extension and flip it to On. Next time a quiz fires on YouTube, you’ll get the explanation prompt instead of MCQ.

Pass threshold

Set the minimum score needed to be counted as having understood the video. Default is 70%. Adjust anywhere from 30% (easy) to 95% (near-perfect recall) in Settings. If your score is below the threshold, the video stays paused and you can Try Again with your previous explanation pre-filled. Above the threshold, you can save the attempt to your dashboard and resume the video.

Topics to identify

Controls how many key concepts the AI lists in its feedback. Default is 4, adjustable 1–10. Fewer topics = higher-level summary; more topics = granular per-concept feedback.

Concept feedback & history

After grading, each concept is color-coded:

• ● Mastered — you explained it correctly both in your previous attempt and this one.
• ● Improved — you missed it last time but got it right this time.
• ● Forgotten — you got it right before but missed it this attempt.
• ● Still missed — you haven’t covered it in either attempt.

Click any timestamp next to a missed concept to jump straight to that moment in the video.

Hints

Stuck? Click the Hint button and the AI gives you a nudge without spoiling the answer.

Feynman cards in Reviews

A successful Feynman attempt saves as a card in your dashboard. During SRS reviews, Feynman cards ask you to re-explain the same video. The grading follows the same threshold you set, and the review counter won’t advance until you pass — protecting your SRS intervals from rushed attempts.

8. Settings — Tutor, Language, Level

The Settings page (extension) lets you customise how Ulearn quizzes and grades you. All settings sync across devices.

Grade Level

Pick 1st grade through 12th grade, College, Graduate / advanced, or Adult / general. The AI matches its vocabulary and question complexity to your choice. A 1st-grade addition video will get simple “Which column do you add first?” questions instead of abstract “Why does carrying fundamentally represent place value?” questions.

Reading Level

Independent from grade level. Controls how much text each question contains:

• Minimal — symbols and numbers wherever possible (e.g. 3 + 4 = ? instead of “If you have three apples and get four more…”). Answers are 1–3 words. Great for math and readers who prefer brevity.
• Short — brief sentences, no word problems, ≤ 5-word answers.
• Normal — default.
• Advanced — longer, richer question text is fine.

Quiz Language

Force every quiz into the language you’re studying, regardless of the video’s source language. Useful for language learners: watch an English explanation of Spanish grammar and get the quiz in Spanish. Pick from 20 languages including Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified / Traditional), Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, and more. Leave on Auto to match the video.

AI Tutor personality

• Grading Strictness — Lenient / Normal / Strict / Harsh.
• Kindness Level — Tough Love / Balanced / Very Kind / Cheerleader.
• Theme — a free-text vibe (e.g. “Harry Potter”, “Pirate”) that colors the AI’s feedback.
• Name — what the tutor calls you in feedback.
• Teaching Style — mnemonics, examples, jokes, visual descriptions. Pick multiple to mix.

Quiz Text Size

Small / Medium / Large. Affects the quiz overlay font on YouTube.

Long-video mode

Split (quiz every 10 min) or Combine (one big quiz at the end). See the Chrome Extension section for the full explanation.

9. Focus Lock

Focus Lock is a self-discipline tool for learners who want to force themselves to finish the quiz before going back to the video. When turned on, the × close button and any Skip buttons disappear from quizzes — you must complete them to continue.

Turning Focus Lock on

Settings → Focus Lock — Required Quizzes → switch to Required. That’s it. All future quizzes skip the escape hatches.

Optional lock password

If you know yourself well enough to expect that you’ll try to disable Focus Lock in a moment of weakness, set a lock password (separate from your Ulearn account password). Once set, you’ll have to enter it every time you want to switch Required back to Optional.

• Click Set password, pick something at least 4 characters long, confirm it, save.
• To change it later, click Change password — you’ll be asked for the current one first.
• To remove it, click Remove password — same verification.

Forgot your Focus Lock password

Click Forgot password? in Settings. Ulearn emails a 6-digit code to your account email. Enter it, pick a new Focus Lock password, and you’re in. Your Ulearn login password is not changed — this is a separate reset flow specifically for Focus Lock.

10. Explore & Public Courses

The Explore tab shows courses published by other Ulearn users. Each course is a deck of cards linked to YouTube videos.

Searching

Use the search bar to filter by course name, author, description, or lesson name. The search runs instantly as you type — no need to press Enter.

Adding a course

1. Find a course you’re interested in and click + Add Course.
2. The course is imported into your Decks as a regular deck with fresh SRS state (all cards start at Stage 0).
3. Open the deck — each lesson (pile) has a ▶ YouTube link to the source video.
4. Watch the video on YouTube, then come back and click I watched it on that lesson to unlock its cards for review.
5. Once unlocked, the cards appear in your Reviews tab and follow normal SRS scheduling.

Voting on courses

Each course card has thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. To vote, you must first add the course to your library and review all its cards past the “new” stage. This ensures only learners who’ve actually used the course can rate it. Voting is available on both the website and extension.

Removing a course

On the Explore tab, any course you’ve already added shows ✓ Added — Click to Remove. Clicking it asks for confirmation, then removes the deck and all its review history from your library.

11. Publishing a Course

If you’ve built a deck you want to share, you can publish it as a public course so others can find it on the Explore tab.

1. Open the deck on the web app (publishing is not available in the extension).
2. Click Publish in the deck detail view.
3. Your course appears in Explore with your display name as the author (or “Anonymous” if you opted into anonymous publishing).

Managing published courses

Go to Account → Manage Published Courses to see a list of everything you’ve published. You can Unpublish any course to remove it from the Explore directory.

YouTube content in courses

Video-based courses link to content hosted on YouTube. Ulearn does not download, re-host, or modify the original videos — playback always happens on YouTube’s own player. If a video is taken down by its creator, the lesson link will no longer work, but your saved quiz cards remain. Creators can request removal of derived course content via our YouTube API Services Disclosure.

12. Syncing Across Devices

As long as you’re signed into the same Ulearn account on both the extension and the web app, your data syncs automatically via the cloud:

• Decks, cards, and review progress sync whenever you add, review, or delete anything.
• Lesson watched state syncs — mark a lesson as watched on the extension and it unlocks on the web app (and vice versa).
• Card deletions propagate via tombstones — deleting a card on one device removes it on the other on next sync.

Manual sync

If something looks out of date, open the Account menu and click Sync Now. This pulls the latest state from the cloud and pushes any local changes.

Clear My Data

Account → Clear My Data permanently deletes all your decks, cards, and review history from both your device and the cloud. Published courses are not affected — use “Manage Published Courses” to unpublish those separately.

13. Account & Profile

Avatar

Pick one of 24 pixel-art characters as your profile avatar. Go to Account, scroll to the avatar grid, click any character, then hit Save Profile. Your avatar appears:

• Next to your name on the Leaderboard.
• Next to the “by …” author line on any public course you publish.
• In the header of your own Account page.

If you opted for anonymous publishing or anonymous leaderboard, your avatar is hidden too — only the text “Anonymous” shows in those places.

Display name

Your display name is what other users see when you publish a course. You pick it the first time you sign in, and can change it anytime from the Account page (web app) or the Account page in the Chrome extension.

• 3–30 characters. Letters, numbers, dots, hyphens, and underscores.
• Must be unique — the input shows real-time availability as you type.
• Certain words (profanity, impersonation terms) are blocked.

Anonymous publishing

If you’d rather not show your display name on published courses, tick “Publish public courses anonymously” in your account settings. Your courses will appear as “by Anonymous”. You can toggle this on or off at any time, and it takes effect the next time you publish or re-publish a course.

Signing out

Account → Sign Out. Your data stays in the cloud and will be there when you sign back in. Local data on the device is preserved so you can continue offline, but new changes won’t sync until you sign in again.

Email verification

New email accounts receive a verification email. You must verify before you can access the dashboard. This prevents others from creating accounts with your email address. You can also choose Continue without account to use the app without signing in.

AI usage tracking

Your Account tab shows an AI Usage panel with input tokens, output tokens, and total value used. This tracks how much AI processing your quizzes and feedback consume. Tracking works when you’re signed in across both the website and extension.

Forgot password

On the sign-in screen, click Forgot password? and enter your email. A password-reset link will be sent to your inbox.

14. Leaderboard

The Leaderboard lets you see how you rank against other learners. It tracks four metrics:

• Reviews Done — total card reviews across all your courses.
• Cards Practiced — unique cards you’ve reviewed at least once.
• Mistakes Reviewed — total wrong answers (cards you’re actively working on).
• Videos Watched — lessons you’ve marked as watched.

Opting in

The leaderboard is opt-in by default. To appear on it, go to Settings → Account and tick “Show me on the public leaderboard”. Your display name will be visible to other users.

Staying anonymous

If you want to appear on the leaderboard without showing your name, tick the additional “…but show me as Anonymous” checkbox. You’ll still be ranked, but your entry will display as “Anonymous”.

How stats sync

Your stats are computed from your local deck data and pushed to the leaderboard when you sign in, save your profile, or visit the Leaderboard tab. Both the website and Chrome extension feed the same leaderboard.

15. Google Sign-In

You can sign in with your Google account instead of an email and password.

1. On the sign-in screen, click Continue with Google.
2. A Google sign-in window opens. Choose your Google account.
3. If it’s your first time, you’ll be asked to set a display name.
4. You’re signed in — your data syncs across all your devices.

Email sign-in

If you use email and password, the sign-in and sign-up flow is unified. Just enter your email and password and click Sign In / Sign Up. If the email doesn’t exist, a new account is created automatically. A verification email is sent on sign-up — you’ll need to verify before accessing the dashboard.

16. Onboarding Tour

First-time visitors see a guided tour that walks through the app. You can choose between:

• Quick Tour (30 seconds) — points at each navigation tab and explains what it does.
• Detailed Tour (2 minutes, web app) — an interactive walkthrough where you actually add a public course, watch a lesson, mark it as done, and quiz yourself on the cards.

The tour auto-starts once on first visit.

Per-page tour buttons

Need a refresher on a specific screen? Several pages have a ? tour button in their header:

• Dashboard → Dashboard tour — walks through stats, practice cards, SRS stages, and the review schedule.
• Create → Create tour — explains name, color, quiz mode, and language for new decks.
• Settings → Settings tour — covers Focus Lock, grading, Feynman mode, grade/reading levels, quiz language, and teaching style.
• Settings → Replay welcome tour — restart the initial onboarding tour.

17. FAQ & Tips

The quiz didn’t appear at the end of the video

This can happen if:

• The video is shorter than 30 seconds (or 10 seconds for Shorts).
• You’ve already been quizzed on this video in the current session.
• The quiz was cached from a previous watch (check the console for “Using cached quiz”).
• Captions loaded late — enabling CC early in the video helps.
• For 20+ minute videos in Split mode, the quiz fires every 10 minutes instead of at the end. If you skipped or scrubbed past a checkpoint, the next one (or the end-of-video trigger) will catch it.

I want a fresh quiz on a video I’ve already seen

The extension caches quizzes for 7 days to save AI costs. After 7 days, the next watch generates a brand-new quiz. If you need one sooner, open the extension’s DevTools console and run chrome.storage.local.remove('ulearn_quiz_cache_VIDEO_ID') (replace VIDEO_ID with the 11-character YouTube video ID).

My review counts don’t match between the extension and the website

Make sure you’re signed into the same account on both. Then click Sync Now on whichever device looks stale. If you imported a course, some cards may be locked behind “Watch the video first” — those don’t count toward the due total until you mark them watched.

Can I use Ulearn offline?

The web app works offline as a PWA (Progressive Web App) — install it via your browser’s “Add to Home Screen” prompt. You can review cards offline; changes sync the next time you’re online and signed in. Generating new quizzes requires an internet connection (the AI runs on a server).

How much does it cost?

Browsing public courses, studying premade quizzes, and spaced-repetition reviews are always free — no credits needed. AI-powered features like quiz generation and AI grading consume Ulearn Credits. The first 50 users get $3 of free credit. After that, you can buy credits from Account settings ($1–$500). The extension caches quizzes per video to minimise credit usage.

The quiz won’t let me move on — I got one wrong

That’s by design. Auto-quizzes on YouTube now require every question correct before the video resumes. Wrong answers slot back into the quiz a few slides later so you get another chance. If a question feels genuinely broken, click the flag icon to dispute it.

I reloaded the extension and stayed on the same page

Yes — the extension dashboard now remembers the page you were viewing across reloads. The address bar reflects this (e.g. dashboard.html#create). Browser back/forward buttons also work to navigate between pages you’ve visited.

The AI Generate cap is 50 cards — can I raise it?

50 is the hard ceiling per batch to keep question quality high. In practice 10–15 tends to be the sweet spot. If you need more cards on a topic, run AI Generate a second time with different source material or a different angle (e.g. “focus on edge cases” in the subject line).

I found a bug or have a feature request

Join the Ulearn Discord or email academysiegel@gmail.com.

Where is my data stored?

Your account, decks, and review history are stored securely in the cloud and sync across your devices. Raw video transcripts are never stored — they’re used once to generate quiz questions and then discarded. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

How do I delete my account?

Sign in to ulearnai.org/app → Account → Clear My Data. This removes all decks, cards, and review data. To also delete your login credentials, email academysiegel@gmail.com and we’ll remove the account entirely.