What decides which knowledge deserves reinforcement?
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The interesting distinction here is between generating cards and deciding what deserves reinforcement. Turning any webpage into cards removes capture friction, but the real value is synthesis: can The Sponge identify which ideas connect, conflict, or matter enough to revisit? That would make spaced repetition feel less like a bigger queue and more like knowledge compounding.
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Worth splitting the trigger in two: “I failed to recall this” vs “this just became relevant again.” Spaced repetition only catches the first. But most knowledge doesn’t decay on a clock — it sits dormant until a new input lands next to it and pulls it back into play. A timer can’t sense that moment; only the new input can. Which makes me think “deserves reinforcement” isn’t a property of the card at all — it’s decided by whatever just arrived to test it.
Same question I'd want answered. Spaced repetition already has a per-card signal: how hard was this to recall last time. That's a different signal from a cross-card one: does this idea contradict something I marked as understood three weeks ago, or does it just connect to five other cards I've been reinforcing. The first is memory decay. The second is actually knowing what matters. Most tools I've seen only have the first.