Getting started

1. Keep sage.html on your desktop (or a shortcut to it; see Desktop icon). Double-click it whenever you want to study, just like opening an app. It works offline.
2. Click Import CSV and choose a file, or paste text. Pick which column is the front and which is the back.
3. Press Flash cards on your deck to study. Flip a card, then rate how well you knew it.
4. Try the Quiz to test yourself or Games for practice. Use Options → Edit cards to fix or add cards.

Making cards

A CSV is plain text where each line is one card: the front, a comma, then the back.

Front,Back
Mitochondria,Powerhouse of the cell
Osmosis,Water moving across a membrane

No CSV? Let a free AI chat make one.

1. Open a free AI chat such as Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT.
2. Type "Make this into a CSV file", then paste your notes, or attach photos, screenshots, or a PDF of them.
3. Copy the reply, then in SAGE choose Import CSV, open Or paste text instead, paste, and press Use pasted text.

From a spreadsheet: put fronts in column A and backs in column B, then save or download as CSV (in Excel, choose "CSV UTF-8"). You can also copy the two columns and paste them straight into the paste box.

More than two columns? SAGE keeps every column. Later, in Options → Edit cards, you can choose which columns appear on each side, including several on one side.

Prefer to skip hopping between platforms? The built-in AI study guide does all of this inside SAGE once you add an API key, and it can also look at your study stats to tell you what to focus on.

What can I paste?

One card per line or table row, with the front first and the back second. Any of these work, even when they sit inside a longer AI reply; extra sentences around the cards are ignored.

• Comma separated: Mitochondria,Powerhouse of the cell
• Quoted: "Mitochondria", "Powerhouse, of the cell" (use quotes when the text has commas)
• Tab separated, which is what you get when you copy two columns from Excel or Google Sheets
• Tables from AI chats: | Mitochondria | Powerhouse of the cell |
• Lists: Mitochondria: Powerhouse of the cell or Mitochondria - Powerhouse of the cell, one per line, with or without bullets or numbers

A header row like Front,Back or Term,Definition is optional; SAGE spots it and lets you confirm. Semicolons work in place of commas too.

Flash cards

• Each deck shows New (never studied), Learning (seen recently, coming back soon), and Due (ready for review today).
• After flipping a card, rate it: Again if you forgot, Hard, Good, or Easy. Each button shows when you'll see the card next.
• Cards you know well come back less and less often. That's spaced repetition, and it's why a few minutes a day beats cramming.
• Set new cards per day, cards per session, and target recall in Options. A new study day starts at 4 AM.
• Done for the day? Press Flash cards again for Study more: extra new cards, reviewing early, or free practice.

Keyboard: Space flips the card, 1 to 4 rate it.

Quiz, games, and the deck editor

Quiz: a one-page test answered with the mouse: multiple choice, true or false, and fill in the missing word. Choose how many questions, which side is the answer, and whether answers are marked as you go or when you submit. Optionally, missed questions mark those cards as Hard in flash cards so they come back right away.

Games never change your study schedule. Each has its own options on the Settings tab, and most pause with P.

• Matching Tiles: pair fronts with backs against the clock.
• Matching Pairs: wire each item on the left to its match on the right.
• Scramble: shoot the falling rock with the right answer.
• Blast: shoot the right planet and clear each level before time runs out.
• Terminal: type each card, choosing the missing word from four options. Every word you type adds a second to the clock.
• Survival: type just the missing word from memory, with 3 lives. Tab or the hint button reveals a letter for a life.
• Lightning: decide true or false as fast as you can. Right answers add 5 seconds (3 after five minutes), wrong ones take 5 away.

Deck editor (Options → Edit cards): add, edit, delete (with undo), search, and reorder cards. New cards are studied in the order shown.

AI study guide and free API keys

The AI study guide turns notes, photos, PDFs, or text files into flash cards plus study tips, and can use your study stats to point out weak spots. It needs an API key: a password that lets SAGE talk to an AI for you.

Recommended free option: Google Gemini. It has a free tier, usually needs no credit card, and reads photos and PDFs.

1. Go to Google AI Studio and sign in with a Google account.
2. Click Create API key, then copy the key (it starts with AIza).
3. In SAGE, open AI study guide, choose Google Gemini, and paste the key. The model box fills in gemini-3.5-flash-lite: stable, fast, reads images and PDFs, and has a much bigger free daily allowance (about 500 requests a day, versus about 20 for the full Flash models). You can type another model name into the box anytime.

• Choose a model that can read images and files. Text-only models can't use photos or PDFs.
• Free means rate-limited. If you see "too many requests," wait a minute. Free limits change from time to time; AI Studio shows the current ones.
• "Busy" or "overloaded" errors come from Google's servers, not your key. SAGE automatically retries and, if needed, switches to a backup Gemini model, telling you which one answered.
• Privacy: Google says free-tier requests may be used to improve its products, so avoid sending anything private.
• Other options: Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI, or any service with an OpenAI-style API, work too. They're pay-as-you-go; a study guide typically costs a few cents.
• The instructions are yours to edit. Change the Instructions for the AI box to get more cards, simpler wording, or another language. Reset to default brings back the original.

Saving, backups, and updating

• Everything saves automatically in this browser on this computer. There's no account.
• Autosave to a file (Chrome and Edge, recommended): open Backup and press Choose a save file once. SAGE then keeps that file up to date every time you study, so your decks are safe even if browser data is cleared. On a new computer, choose Use an existing save file to pick up where you left off. After a browser restart, you may need to press Reconnect once.
• Backup reminder: if nothing has been saved outside the browser for a week, SAGE shows a note with a one-click backup. Remind me later hides it for three days.
• Storage protection: SAGE asks your browser not to clear its data on its own when space runs low. Some browsers ask you to allow this.
• Clearing your browser's history or site data deletes your decks. Opening SAGE in a different browser starts empty.
• Use Backup → Export backup every so often. To move to another computer or browser, export there and choose Restore from backup here.
• Leave sage.html where it is. In some browsers, moving or renaming it can hide your saved decks (restoring a backup brings them back).
• The website version and a downloaded copy keep separate decks. Pick one, or use a backup to move between them.

Updating SAGE: your decks live in the browser, not in the file, so updating doesn't erase them.

1. Export a backup, just in case.
2. Download the new sage.html and put it exactly where the old one was, with the same name, replacing it.
3. Open it. Your decks are still there. The version number is at the bottom of the page.

Using the website version? Updates arrive automatically; just refresh.

Give SAGE its own desktop icon

A plain HTML file shows your browser's logo. Download sage.ico (Windows) or sage-icon.png (Mac) from the latest release on SAGE's GitHub page and keep it next to sage.html.

Windows

1. Keep sage.html and sage.ico together in a folder, such as Documents\SAGE.
2. Right-click sage.html, choose Show more options → Send to → Desktop (create shortcut).
3. Right-click the new shortcut, choose Properties → Change Icon → Browse, pick sage.ico, and press OK. Rename the shortcut to SAGE.

Mac

1. Open sage-icon.png in Preview, then choose Edit → Select All and Edit → Copy.
2. Click sage.html in Finder and choose File → Get Info.
3. Click the small icon at the top left of the Info window and press Command+V.

Website version: in Chrome or Edge, open the browser menu and choose Install or Create shortcut (tick "Open as window") to get a SAGE icon on your desktop.

Privacy and safety

• No account, no ads, no tracking. Your cards never leave your browser except when you use the AI study guide.
• SAGE only contacts the internet for its fonts, and for the AI provider you set up, only when you press Create study guide.
• SAGE only runs its own code. Card text is always shown as plain text, and backup files are checked before they're restored.
• Your API key stays in this browser and is never included in backups. Use Forget key on shared computers, and set a spending limit with your AI provider if it's a paid one.

Supporting SAGE

SAGE is free. If it helps you, the Donate link under the SAGE logo shows crypto addresses and QR codes for tips. Always check that an address matches the one on SAGE's GitHub page before sending. Don't want to see the link? Hide it here or on the donate page, and bring it back anytime.

Troubleshooting