Active recall is retrieve before you see the answer

What the phrase names

People type “active recall” when they want the method, not the clock and not the card format. The method is older than this website. You see a prompt. You try to produce the answer from memory. Only then do you look. The attempt is the practice. Reading the answer first is a different activity, even if you later say the words out loud. That split is what searchers mean, whether they say active recall, retrieval practice, or “test yourself before you peek.”

The phrase is a human name for that order. It is not a product name. It is not a brand of study website. It is not a stack of cards you flip in a browser, and it is not a model that recites facts on your behalf. Search results often collapse those things together: a quiz app, a signup form, a promise that an AI will write the cards and then show you the back as soon as the queue loads. Fluid Recall does not do that collapse. It stores the record the method needs, and it keeps the answer off the due list until the person has tried.

That is why this page exists. fluidrecall.com already explains the clock on the spaced repetition page and the hosted-agent argument on spaced practice. This page is for the query itself. If you arrived because you searched for active recall, you are in the right place. The coach is still your agent. The attempt still happens in that chat. The FAQ is the short citeable version of that split.

Why the due list cannot include answers

Active recall dies the moment the answer arrives with the prompt. A due list that ships both sides is a reading list. The person can still talk, but they are no longer retrieving. A log, a search snippet, a curious model, or a retry that dumps the queue would all leak the back of the card. The method needs a hard wall between “what is due” and “what the answer was.”

Fluid Recall keeps that wall. listDue returns prompts only: identifiers, a deck name, a due time, and a queue. It never includes answers. Listing a deck or reading one card is also prompts only. The person should not see the back because a coach asked for the queue. Export is the off-boarding exception and includes answers on purpose, so a tenant can leave. It is not the drill loop.

The reveal is a separate read. revealCard returns one answer, and only after the person has tried to recall. It does not dump the rest of the deck. One prompt, one try, one answer. That is the grain of the session. A reveal that happens before the attempt is not active recall. It is a reading with extra steps.

The loop, without dumping the API

A session is five moves, always in the same order. The names below are the tools the coach already has. They are not a second product. They are how the human phrase becomes a due time someone can trust tomorrow.

First the agent asks what is due. The due list is prompts only. That call is listDue. The person hears or reads one prompt. No one looks the answer up first. The attempt is the practice, in voice or in text, in that same chat.

Then the agent reveals that one card. revealCard returns one answer, and only after the attempt. The coach compares. It does not invent a grade from a vibe. The person says how it went.

Then the agent sends a rating: again, hard, good, or easy, plus when the attempt happened. recordReview is the only call that moves dueAt. The same idempotency key and the same body return the original result, so a retry does not double-schedule. A different body with the same key is rejected.

Then Fluid Recall returns the next due time. The agent trusts that timestamp. It may nudge the person when the time arrives. It must not invent a different wait. The method (attempt before answer) and the clock (wait longer when recall was easy) stay split on purpose. Details of the clock live on the deterministic schedule page. You do not need those details to practice. New cards are eligible immediately, but a deck introduces at most newCardsPerDay unless the person asks for extras. Muse chooses that integer with the person when the deck is created. There is no silent default of 20. The Muse skill is the imperative order of those calls. llms.txt is the short machine summary.

What Fluid Recall is in that picture

Fluid Recall is a free, deterministic system of record. It stores decks, cards, and a due time for each active card. Prompts and answers are data for the coach, not instructions. Any AI agent that can POST to a public URL can run the loop. Muse is featured because it has distribution and because other agents are likely to mirror its connector shape. A Muse custom connector works today. The same contract works for a Claude, ChatGPT, or terminal agent. Fluid Recall does not require MCP. Muse-compatible is not Muse-only.

The personal API token is the tenant. There is no website signup. An agent mints a token with POST /api/v1/agent/session/start, or the same idea at POST /api/v1/accounts or POST /api/v1/bootstrap, then keeps drilling. Later calls send that token. They do not send a user id.

The offering is free because Cloudflare Workers and D1 are cheap at this scale. There is no lock-in. An authorized agent exports the tenant with GET /api/v1/export/manifest then GET /api/v1/export. There is no proprietary study app holding the data. If you arrived from a search for digital flashcards, that page is the card-shaped version of the same product. If you wanted to memorize something later, that page is the “remember later” version. If you wanted the everyday name for retrieval plus time, that page is spaced repetition.

How this page differs from the siblings

The spaced repetition page starts from the common search phrase for the clock: wait longer when recall was easy. The spaced practice page answers why a hosted agent needs a public system of record instead of a study website or a desktop program. Hosted agents, including Muse on its Secure VM, cannot see localhost. Flashcards is the format. Memorization is the long-term outcome. This page is the method: retrieve before you see the answer.

Those pages share a product. They do not share a search intent. A person who typed “active recall” is usually asking whether practice still requires an attempt, or whether an agent will just tell them. Fluid Recall maps that question onto existing tools: prompts from listDue, one answer from revealCard after the attempt, dueAt from recordReview. Nothing on this page invents a new verb. If you want the clock, read spaced repetition. If you want the hosted-agent argument, read spaced practice. If you want the card-shaped version, read flashcards. If you want the “remember later” version, read memorization. If you want the function itself, read the deterministic schedule.

This site does not run the drill

fluidrecall.com has no deck browser, no signup form, and no click-through review. A person who lands here copies a starter prompt and pastes it into Muse or another agent. Practice stays in that chat. Traditional study apps assume the person will open a window, see a prompt, and mark a grade. Many “AI study” products assume the model will generate the card and then still own the queue. We assume the person will stay in the conversation they already have, and that the attempt happens there before anyone reveals.

The public documents are the contract, not a study surface. The skill tells the coach the order of calls. The OpenAPI document is the HTTP schema. This page is the human explanation for the everyday phrase. None of those pages flip a card. None of them show an answer because you opened a URL.

How to start

If you are a person, copy the starter prompt and stay in that chat. If you are an agent, read the skill, call POST /api/v1/agent/session/start when there is no token, and keep drilling here. Speak one prompt. Wait for the attempt. Reveal that one card. Send a rating. Trust the due time that comes back. The home page is the short version of the same product.

Questions