Weak, missed, and flagged: the three ways Encodr tracks what you don't know

Knowing you're "bad at chapter 7" isn't specific enough to act on. Encodr keeps three distinct, narrower signals instead of one vague weak-spots list, and each one answers a different question.

Weak cards: the early-warning signal

Weak cards are ranked by recent misses and lapses - it's the broadest of the three signals, meant to catch trouble before it becomes a real pattern. A card you've slipped on the last couple of times shows up here even if it hasn't become a chronic problem yet. This is the list worth a glance after a study session, before a small crack becomes a habit.

Missed cards: the persistent trouble set

Missed cards are stricter - a card lands here only after 4 or more misses in the last 30 days without being relearned since. This is deliberately a smaller, more serious list than weak cards: it's not "you slipped once," it's "you keep genuinely not knowing this," which usually means the card itself needs a different approach, not just another rep. A card stuck here is often a sign the fact needs a mnemonic, a rewrite, or a split into two simpler cards rather than more raw repetition - see mnemonics and personal notes and how to write a flashcard that works for what to actually do about a card that keeps beating you.

Flagged cards: what you told it yourself

Flagged cards are the one signal you control directly - you flag a card during study because you want it explained further, think it has a mistake, think it should be split into multiple cards, or have a specific question about it. This is the only one of the three that carries your own annotation alongside the card, and it's the mechanism behind connecting an AI to build your decks being able to walk through your flagged cards and actually explain or fix each one - on your own decks, that includes editing or deleting the card outright; on curated or shared decks, you get the explanation but not edit access, since that content isn't yours to change.

Why three lists instead of one

Collapsing these into a single "weak spots" number would erase the actual difference between "I'm a little rusty on this" (weak), "I have never actually learned this" (missed), and "I specifically flagged this as broken or confusing" (flagged) - three different problems that call for three different responses. Keeping them separate is what makes the feedback actionable instead of just a discouraging number.