The assistant is a chat that knows your study material. It reads your topics, cards, sources and exams to answer questions about them, explain them and quiz you. It reads what your sources say too: the pages of a PDF, a Word document, a text or an image, up to 100 pages for each message you send. Memorics gets PDFs and Word documents ready for it when you add them (see Add sources); until that’s done, it tells you it can’t read them yet.
When you ask it for cards, it writes them into the topic they’re for (see Making cards with the assistant). A card it makes from a source names the pages it’s from, and only pages it has read. Unless you turned off Review its cards first (see Instructions and settings), its cards wait for your review: they show among the topic’s cards, but you only see them yourself and they aren’t studied, counted or part of an exam until you keep them.
When you ask, it also changes your cards and topics: it rewrites, moves and flags cards, creates, renames and moves topics, and archives them or moves them to the trash. Before some changes it asks you first, and Undo puts back what an answer changed (see What it can change).
With a topic or a source open, or cards or topics selected, buttons such as Find gaps, Explain this page and Ask AI ask it for the usual tasks in one click (see Quick actions).
Opening it
The Assistant button at the top right of every page opens it, with its keys shown beside its name on a computer. So does pressing Ctrl ., or ⌘ . on a Mac. On a large screen it sits beside the page, which moves over to make room. On a smaller one it opens over the page, and on a phone it fills the screen. Drag its left edge to make it wider or narrower, and the width you choose stays on this device. While it is open, its button is hidden: the X at the top of it closes it, and so do the same keys. Memorics remembers on each device whether it was open, and it isn’t there during a study session. While you read a source, it’s the AI tab next to it instead (see Read a source).
Asking
Write your message at the bottom and press Enter to send it. For a new line, use the keys Shift Enter instead. The assistant writes its answer as it thinks of it. Before its text, it lists what it looked at, such as “Searched for “Krebs cycle”” with how many cards it found, so you can see where the answer comes from.
You don’t need to wait for it to finish. A message you send with Enter while it answers shows above the input and goes to it as soon as it’s done with the step it’s on, such as reading a topic’s cards. While it answers, the send button turns into a red Stop button. It ends the answer where it is, keeping what it wrote, and drops a message that was waiting.
The answer goes on if you close the assistant or the page, and it’s there when you come back, on this device or another.
Premium
On Plus, Premium, at the bottom of the box where you write, has the assistant answer with a stronger model, for harder questions. It stays on for the rest of the chat until you switch it off, and a new chat starts with it off. An answer written with it says Premium under it. It uses about 10 times as much of your assistant allowance (see Your assistant allowance), so leave it off for everyday questions. On Free, Premium is marked Plus and doesn’t switch on.
Mentioning
To ask about something by name, type @ and the start of its name. A list above the box shows your topics, sources, cards and exams that match, and picking one puts it into your message, marked in color, so the assistant knows exactly which one you mean, such as “Make cards like @Photosynthesis”. Cards are found by their text and sources by their title. Each mention shows with the icon and color of what it is: a topic’s or an exam’s own, a source’s by its kind, and a card’s in the card color. Use the arrow keys and
Enter or Tab to pick one, or click it, and Esc to close the list. A mention goes away as a whole with Backspace.
While the assistant is open, you can also mention a card or source you see on the page: choose Mention in chat in its menu (the … button, or a right click), or hold Alt and click it. It goes at the end of your message.
Skills
For some kinds of tasks, such as making cards for vocabulary or explaining something, the assistant follows a skill: a set of instructions for doing that task well. When your message fits one, it uses it on its own, and the list of what it looked at says “Used a skill”. To pick one yourself, type
/ in your message. You can switch skills off and write your own (see Skills).
Questions
Sometimes the assistant asks you something before it goes on, such as which topic you mean or what to focus on. Its answer then ends with the questions, one at a time, each with a few answers to pick from. Click one, or press its number. Some questions let you pick more than one. Next goes to the next question, Skip leaves one out, and Send sends your answers, and the assistant goes on with them. If you’d rather write something else, just send a message instead.
What it sees
Each message you send goes with what’s on your screen, so you can ask about “this topic” or “these cards” without naming them. Above the box where you write, small labels show what goes with it: the topic or exam you have open, the cards you can see on a topic’s Cards tab (up to 30), and the cards or topics you selected, and the source you’re reading with the page you’re on. The page you’re on, such as Today, goes with it too.
The labels follow you as you move around. Pin on a label keeps it when you go to another page, and Remove leaves it out while you stay on this page. The label of a source you’re reading always goes with your message, so it has neither. Under your message, the chat shows what went with it. The assistant only sees what you can open yourself.
Chats
Each conversation is a chat. The assistant gives it a title after its first answer. New chat at the top starts another. If you open the assistant 6 hours or more after the last message of a chat, a new one starts, and the old one is still there to go back to.
The chat’s title at the top opens your chats, with the newest first under Today, This week and Older. Type to search them by title, and pick one to go back to it. On each chat, Rename gives it a title of your own, and Delete deletes it with all its messages, after you confirm.
When a chat gets long, the assistant summarizes its earliest messages to keep going, and says “Earlier messages summarized”. You still see every message.
Your assistant allowance
What you can ask each week, and within a few hours, is limited. Nothing shows until you’ve used most of it. Then a line above the input says how much you’ve used and when more comes. Once it’s used up, a message isn’t sent until then. See Your assistant allowance for more.