Help & FAQ

Quick answers to the questions students most often ask.

Getting started

I just signed up. What do I do first?
  1. Pick 2–4 subjects you're revising for.
  2. Add your exam date for each (we use it to weight your daily session).
  3. Pick a daily session length (5, 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes) on the dashboard and hit Start mix.
  4. Each correct/wrong answer feeds the spaced-repetition queue, so questions you get wrong come back later.
Which exam boards do you support?
AQA and Edexcel across most GCSE subjects (Maths, Sciences, Languages, Humanities). Computer Science is OCR. English Literature is the Edexcel specification with the full poetry anthology.

How the app works

What's "spaced repetition"?

A study technique that surfaces things you got wrong AT the moment you're about to forget them — not immediately, not weeks later. The intervals double-ish each correct answer: 1 day, 4 days, 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days.

You see the schedule visualised on your profile page.

How is the daily session built?
  • Reviews first — questions you previously got wrong that the system thinks you're about to forget
  • Then weak topics — the ones you've scored lowest accuracy on
  • Then some untouched topics — so you don't keep missing things you haven't started
  • Subject mix is weighted by exam proximity — closer exam = bigger share of today's questions
  • Sized to your pace — a "30-min session" really takes ~30 minutes at your measured questions-per-minute

There's a ⋮ menu on the daily session card for a full fact-file.

What does the % next to a topic mean? Why doesn't it match the colour?

The % is the share of the topic you've covered — distinct questions answered ÷ total questions.

The colour is your accuracy on what you've attempted — red <30%, amber 30–70%, green ≥70%.

So a topic with 5/30 done all correct shows 17% with a green ring: lots more to cover, but doing well on what you've done.

How does the streak work?
You keep your streak by doing the equivalent of about 5 minutes of revision per day — roughly 10 questions at the average pace. So either finish the 5-minute session or do the first few minutes of a longer one. Skip a day, the streak resets to zero.
What's Gist AI?

Click Ask Gist AI under any question and you get a chat panel that can explain that specific question step-by-step, suggest hints, or rephrase the concept. It already knows the question, the topic, the correct answer, and your most recent attempt — so it stays on-topic and can answer "why is this wrong?" without you re-typing anything.

You get a limited number of chat turns per day. If the AI is unavailable, the explanations stored against that question stay accessible.

Why are some MCQ options hidden behind a "reveal" box?
That's active-recall mode. Hiding the options forces you to think of the answer yourself before you see the choices — much more effective than recognition. You can turn it off in Settings if you'd rather see all four options up front.

Common worries

I forgot my password. Can I reset it?
Not automatically yet — Gist is a personal project and password reset by email isn't wired up. Email hello@gist.example from the address you used at signup (if any) and we'll help. In the meantime, write your password down somewhere safe.
I misclicked / accidentally got something wrong. Can I undo it?
Yes — right after submitting, the result banner has a "Misclick? Don't count it" link (or "Lucky guess?" on a correct one). Clicking that reverses the answer's effect on your mastery + spaced-repetition queue.
I'm going on holiday. Will I come back to a wall of overdue reviews?
No — set holiday mode in Settings. Pick a date to come back; until then, no reviews build up. When the pause ends, the overdue queue is spread evenly across the next week instead of dumped on day one.
I want to restart my progress on a subject from scratch. Can I?
Yes — on any subject page, click the ⋮ menu (top right) → Restart progress. Mastery scores, accuracy, and review schedule reset to zero. Your past answers are kept as history.
I want to delete my account completely. How?
Profile page → ⋮ menu → Delete account. You type your username to confirm, then everything is wiped permanently. If you want a copy of your data first, click Export my data from the same menu — you get a JSON file of everything Gist knows about you.

Still stuck?

Email hello@gist.example and describe what you tried — usually fixed within a day or two.