Your first review

Capture a note, wait a bit, and watch a review slide down from your notch. About thirty seconds of real effort.

With Atomus installed and your vault picked, you're one note away from your first review. Here's the full loop in about thirty seconds of actual effort.

1. Capture something worth remembering

Press ⌥ A from anywhere. A small window drops down from the notch. Write an atom as a front/back pair separated by ==.

What did Ebbinghaus prove in 1885? == That memory decays exponentially
in the first 24 hours after learning.

Hit ⌘ ↵ to save. Everything before == is what you'll see on review. Everything after is what you're trying to recall.

That's the simplest shape. Atomus also recognizes multi-line answers, multiple choice ((x) / ( )), numbered lists, cloze ({{answer}}, optionally with |distractors), and tasks with a deadline (- [ ] ... @YYYY-MM-DD). See Capture for the full set.

2. Your atom is ready

The moment you save, your front/back pair lands in the review queue. No extra step. Click the menu bar icon and open Atoms if you want to see it.

If you'd rather write freely and let the AI turn it into atoms for you, press the atomify button in the capture window. More on that in Extraction.

3. Meet the notch

FSRS schedules your first review for anywhere between a few minutes and an hour later, depending on what you captured. When the moment comes, the atom slides down from your notch while you're in another app.

An atom slides down. You rate it. It's gone.

Answer with one key.

1 for Forgot, if it didn't come back
2 for Remember, if it did

That's it. The atom goes back into the queue, and Atomus picks a new interval based on how you answered.

If you want the full FSRS rating scale (Again, Hard, Good, Easy), turn it on in Settings → Labs → Review buttons and switch to FSRS. Most people don't need it. Two buttons are enough to drive the schedule.

That's the loop

Capture is cheap. Extraction is automatic. Review is ambient. Do this for a week and you'll have a small library of things you used to forget. Do it for a month and you'll notice the shape of your own memory changing.

No session. No discipline. Just the three moments above, repeating.