Superbasic Accountability via AnkiWeb

I would like to track my Anki habit through productivity apps in order to ensure I study daily and not just when inspiration strikes. This would require me to be able to access basic numbers, or even just one number: “cards reviewed today across all decks”, through a public page on AnkiWeb. I imagine this would also be useful for people participating in challenges together and holding each other accountable. For example: /stats?user=y1984tafp32pg2 - anonymity ensured through a hard-to-guess identifier that people could choose to share with accountability partners.

Would this be easy to do? It could even be a paid feature :slight_smile:

Fwiw I checked the AnkiConnect plugin but it doesn’t serve my needs because I’d have to run my own server day and night; I usually review cards on my phone. Also, I don’t care for the ability to programmatically add cards or modify the deck in any way, only to get some statistics.

Thanks for this amazing app and all the work you’re doing on it!

There is one productivity app that tracks anki reviews into a productivity app, Habitica https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1758045507

This addon creates a progress bar on the bottom of the review screen. As you answer questions, reach timeboxes, and clear decks, the progress bar advances. When it gets all the way, it scores an Anki Points habit at Habitica.com (which it will create).

This would require me to be able to access basic numbers, or even just one number: “cards reviewed today across all decks”, through a public page on AnkiWeb

Based on the add-on above, you can get the cards review in Anki, maybe forking the project and adjusting for the productivity app chosen will work (if the app accepts inputs from Anki)

I imagine this would also be useful for people participating in challenges together and holding each other accountable. For example: /stats?user=y1984tafp32pg2 - anonymity ensured through a hard-to-guess identifier that people could choose to share with accountability partners.

There is an add-on similar to what you proposed https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/41708974

his add-on ranks all of its users by the number of cards reviewed today, time spend studying today, current streak, reviews in the past 31 days, and retention. You can also invite friends, join a group and/or country leaderboard and compete in leagues.

Thanks. Somehow I suspect the Anki Habitica plugin won’t work for my situation though because I almost always review cards on Anki for iOS, where that plugin wouldn’t have any sway, no?

I’m a coder and wouldn’t shy away from coding my own plugin if necessary, but plugins don’t affect Anki iOS and AnkiWeb, and I’d have to modify one of these places for my use case.

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I’ve no experience with that add-on, but it claims to support reviews on any device. The log of reviews gets synced between devices, so add-ons can look for changes in the review log to record reviews done on other devices.

it claims to support reviews on any device

As a coder, I just don’t see how the plugin could possibly inject code into the Anki iOS app (where I do my reviews) or into AnkiWeb (where they get synced). Is this code injection a possibility that you made available to plugin developers, @dae ? If not, I do believe that the accountability code needs to be added into the official AnkiWeb and not via plugin.

The log of reviews gets synced between devices, so add-ons can look for changes in the review log to record reviews done on other devices.

That is a different matter. I can well believe that, once a week when I open the desktop app in order to add new vocab, the log will sync and the plugin will learn about the reviews I’ve done on my phone in the meantime. However, that is not suitable for a “don’t break the chain” type accountability app or an accountability buddy, because they would see me as having derailed for several days until the next time I can get to my home computer.

Another addon ActivityWatch for Anki - AnkiWeb

I’m unlikely to have time to add this to AnkiWeb any time soon, so I’m just trying to give you suggestions for what you can do for now. If you can’t access your home computer regularly/leave it running with a script to sync once a day, it likely wouldn’t be much work to run a copy of Anki in a $5 cloud VM.

Thank you, I appreciate that and I appreciate everything you have done in creating this amazing software, which I’ve been using for many years. If you want a helping hand with AnkiWeb, I’m Sprachprofi on Github.

Thank you for the kind words :slight_smile: