Mastered or put away: giving a flashcard an ending

A child who has genuinely learned something and a child who has given up on something must never see the same outcome on screen. So there are two endings, they look different on purpose, and neither one destroys anything.

At a glance

The problem both endings solve

Until a card can end, the only lever a child has over a card they no longer need is to keep pressing Too easy and hope the gaps outrun them. That is a bad answer, and it is the answer nearly every flashcard app gives.

Anki has no concept of a finished card at all — the gap simply stretches, up to a default maximum of one hundred years. Mochi does better and offers an Archived state, which stops the card being reviewed while keeping its history. RemNote's documentation describes no retirement at all.

What none of them has is a distinction. Mochi's archive is one neutral bucket: the card you have mastered and the card you are sick of go to the same place, and nothing happens when either arrives.

Why the distinction matters so much for a child

An adult can hold "I've retired this card" as a neutral bookkeeping act. A twelve-year-old cannot, and should not have to. If finishing something and abandoning something produce identical outcomes, the product is quietly teaching that the two are equivalent.

So:

Mastered keeps its star. The card leaves the queue — it has done its job — but it stays visible on the shelf with a ★, keeps counting toward "12 cards", and its star in your child's Sky renders brighter with a thin ring. The collection does not shrink when your child succeeds. That would be exactly the wrong message.

Put away leaves quietly. No badge, no celebration, no penalty. It stops being counted, its star goes, and it waits in a drawer. Putting a card away is allowed to be unremarkable, because sometimes a card is simply not useful and that is nobody's failure.

"You have 47 locked in" beats "you have 340 due"

There is a motivational asymmetry worth naming. Every number a flashcard app usually shows a child goes up when they fall behind: cards due, cards in rotation, days missed. It is a debt counter.

Locking cards in creates the opposite: a number that goes up only when your child gets better at something. On the shelf it reads simply — ★ 12 locked in — and it is the only new number we added, because it is the only one pointing the right way.

Nothing is ever deleted

There is no delete button anywhere in the child-facing product, and this is not squeamishness. Two reasons:

Practical. Every card carries its review history, and the tutor's re-teach signal is built from that history. Deleting a card would destroy the evidence that a topic was ever difficult.

Psychological. A reversible action is safe to take. Because retirement can be undone at any time, we can offer it without an "are you sure?" dialogue — the reassurance is built into the mechanism instead of bolted on as a warning. The tidy-up sheet simply says You can bring it back any time, and means it.

Bringing a card back

Restoring a card keeps everything it learned — its ease, its repetition count — but schedules it for tomorrow rather than resuming a 90-day gap.

That specific choice took some thought. A child asking for a card back wants to practise it, so a three-month wait defeats the request. But they did genuinely learn it once, so resetting it to zero would be a lie in the other direction. Tomorrow is the honest middle.

Where this happens

Not on the review page. The review page keeps exactly three buttons, because deciding a card's fate mid-practice is a different question asked at the worst moment.

It happens in a separate room — a tidy-up page reached from the flashcards shelf — with search, filters, and a ⋯ menu on each card offering only the moves that card's current state allows. There is no dead end: a put-away card offers "bring it back", a mastered card offers "practise it again".

Does mastered mean forever?

Yes, unless your child says otherwise. Nothing resurrects a mastered card on its own — no "just checking you still know it" review at twelve months. We considered it, and decided that breaking the promise once would cost more trust than the extra retention is worth. If your child wants it back, the button is there.

FAQ

What is the difference between mastered and put away?

Mastered is an achievement: the card leaves the review queue but keeps its star and still counts. Put away is a shrug: the card leaves quietly and stops being counted. Both can be reversed at any time.

Can a flashcard be deleted?

No. Nothing is ever destroyed — retiring a card is a reversible change, and the review history stays intact because the tutor's teaching signal is built from it.

Does a mastered card ever come back on its own?

No. Mastered means finished. Your child can choose to practise it again, but nothing resurrects it behind their back — breaking that promise once would cost more trust than the retention is worth.