Use Cases¶

Osmosis is built for people who take notes in order to remember them. Here is how different kinds of learners tend to use it.

The Med Student — You're drowning in anatomy, pharmacology, and pathology, and maintaining two separate systems — notes in one app, flashcards in another — is killing your workflow. Osmosis lets you define flashcards right inside your lecture notes, so your study material lives where you take notes. Image occlusion covers the diagrams. Mind maps show how body systems connect. FSRS keeps you on schedule.

The Self-Taught Developer — You're learning a new language, framework, or codebase on your own. Code cloze cards let you drill syntax and API patterns, blanking a single token or a whole function body. Mind maps give you the big-picture architecture view. Everything stays in the same Markdown files you already take notes in.

The Lifelong Learner — You read books, watch lectures, and take notes — but forget most of it within weeks. Spaced repetition fixes that. Rapid Flashcard Mode means a card costs two blank lines, so you actually make them. No separate app, no export step.

The Obsidian Power User — You've built your second brain in Obsidian and you want mind mapping and spaced repetition without leaving the ecosystem. The card browser is a Bases view. The review log is Markdown in your vault. No proprietary formats, no external accounts, no sync issues.

The Visual Thinker — Outlines and bullet points don't click for you. You need to see the structure. Osmosis turns any Markdown file into an interactive mind map you can edit, rearrange, and study on — bridging the gap between linear notes and spatial understanding.

The Measured Reviewer — You want to see whether the routine is holding. The statistics dashboard answers the usual questions — retention, workload, when you study — and one more besides: how well the cards you studied in the note that taught them are holding up.

Why Osmosis¶

One file, three views. Your headings become mind map branches. Your osmosis code fences become flashcards. Notes, maps, and cards are the same Markdown file, so there is nothing to keep in step.

Markdown is the format. Maps, cards, schedules, and review history are stored as plain text in your vault. They open in any editor, on any device, for as long as you keep the file.

A full mind map editor. Add nodes, edit text, rearrange branches, restyle a subtree — every change writes straight back to the file it came from.

AI-native by design. Because it is only ever text, an AI assistant can read, generate, and edit your study material directly — flashcards, mind maps, and notes alike.

Spatial study mode. Study your flashcards on the mind map, where each fact sits among the ideas it belongs to and you recall it with its context in view.

Contextual study mode. Study cards inline in your notes, surrounded by the explanations and examples you wrote when you first understood them.

A serious SRS toolset. FSRS scheduling, image occlusion with grouping, a full card browser with suspend/reset/re-deck/delete, and a statistics dashboard — all reading and writing the notes you already have.

Mind map transclusion. Embed one mind map inside another with ![[note]]. Build a master map of an entire subject by transcluding individual topic maps, and zoom from the 30,000-foot view down to granular detail.

Next Steps¶