Flashcards (wip)
This guide explains how to create flashcards and the workflow for integrating the flashcards into vBriefings and Brainscape.
Because flashcards are completely derived from the briefing, they are a prime candidate for AI generation. Starting in September 2026, we were successful in creating flashcards using ChatGPT Work, referencing the guidelines in the next section of this document “Flashcard Creation.”
Flashcard Creation
This section explains how to create a complete, accurate, and consistently formatted flashcard deck from a vBriefings briefing. These requirements apply whenever a deck is created, revised, reviewed, or exported. Flashcards are created as a CSV (comma-separated values) file before being imported into Brainscape.
AI Instructions: Follow every requirement in this “Flashcard Creation” section when creating, revising, reviewing, or exporting a deck. If my explicit request conflicts with the document, follow my request for that task and identify the exception. Do not create a CSV until the deck has been shown and approved, unless I explicitly request otherwise. When revisions are requested, show the corrected deck or affected cards and preserve the approved order.
Source and Fidelity
Use the assigned vBriefings briefing as the sole content source. Do not introduce outside information, even when it might clarify or improve an answer.
Read the complete briefing, including expandable, collapsed, accordion, or show/hide content.
Follow the briefing in its displayed order. Do not reorganize it into themes or categories that the author did not establish.
Reflect the author’s structure rather than creating a new interpretation of the argument. Treat headings, subheadings, bold lead-ins, bullets, numbering, repeated structures, and other formatting as evidence of relationships among the content.
If the briefing appears to contain a factual, mathematical, numerical, or internal inconsistency, do not silently correct, reinterpret, re-scope, omit, or annotate the source statement inside a flashcard. Report the suspected problem separately and pause the affected card or cards for user direction. If the briefing is corrected, create the cards from the corrected briefing.
Deck Structure
Card #1 is a fixed informational introduction rather than a study question.
Its Question must use this pattern:
About this Deck: “[Briefing Title]”
Its Answer must use this pattern:
This Deck parallels the briefing at: vbriefings.org/[slug] titled “[Briefing Title].”
—Full citations with links are provided in the briefing. There are no formal citations here, although sources may be mentioned.
—It would be best to read the briefing before studying these cards. Reading the briefing first provides understanding and context.
If the displayed title already contains quotation marks as part of the title, do not add a second pair. In the first sentence of the Answer, place the final period inside the closing quotation mark.
Card #1 is the only metadata exception to the source-reference restrictions below.
Card #2 must always be:
Question: What is this briefing about?
Answer: Use the appropriate sentence from the Preface that describes what the briefing is about. Do not invent a new summary when a suitable Preface sentence is available.
Among substantive study cards, Card #2 is the only card that may refer to “the briefing.” Every other substantive card must stand independently and ask directly about the subject matter.
After Card #2, present all substantive cards in the order in which their content appears in the briefing.
Do not add a fixed “Usage Notes” final card. The deck ends with the final substantive card supported by the source.
Comprehensive Coverage
Cover all substantive content in the briefing.
Consider every substantive paragraph, list, table, example, expandable panel, and other content element. Material must not disappear merely because another passage discusses a related idea.
Do not mechanically create exactly one card per paragraph. A paragraph may justify one card, several cards, or no additional card when its information is already adequately tested in an appropriately placed card.
Break dense material into sensible units of knowledge. Do not overload one answer merely to reduce the card count.
Avoid unnecessary repetition. Comprehensive coverage does not require repeatedly testing essentially the same information.
Names, dates, statistics, organizations, studies, and examples should become cards when they have substantive learning value. Their mere appearance does not automatically require separate cards.
Exclude purely administrative material—such as instructions for downloading slides, saving images, or using another study platform—unless specifically requested.
Questions and Answers
Every card should test useful knowledge rather than merely demonstrate that a passage was processed.
Except for the fixed Card #1 introduction and Card #2, questions and answers must not refer to the source document. Do not use wording such as:
- “According to the briefing”
- “What does the briefing say?”
- “What does the text identify?”
- “The briefing states”
- “This article explains”
Ask directly about the subject matter and give the answer directly.
Every substantive card must make sense independently when encountered by itself. Do not rely on a preceding card, a section heading, or unstated context.
Answers should be concise but complete. Preserve the source’s meaning, scope, certainty, qualifications, and emphasis without unnecessarily reproducing entire passages.
Do not combine unrelated information in one answer when the information would be more useful as separate cards.
Key Points and Equivalent Sections
When the briefing contains a section named Key Points—or an equivalent such as Key Guidelines, Key Suggestions, or Key Tactics—recognize the points explicitly selected by the author.
Create an overview card containing the complete set of Key Points before cards that elaborate on individual points.
Preserve the actual Key Points closely. Do not replace them with newly invented summaries or conceptual categories.
After the overview, create cards for the individual Key Points and for substantive information supporting or explaining them.
Do not manufacture Key Points when the author has not designated a corresponding structure.
Lists, Sections, and Hierarchy
Recognize explicit bulleted, numbered, or otherwise enumerated lists.
Also recognize genuine implicit lists established through repeated headings, bold lead-ins, parallel paragraphs, or similar formatting.
Do not manufacture a list merely because several ideas could logically be grouped together. There must be textual or formatting evidence that the author presented them as a set.
Create an overview/list card before detail cards about individual list items when the list provides an organizing structure for the material.
Preserve the author’s list structure and order. Do not combine, split, rename, or rearrange items merely because another organization seems more logical.
Use section headings to understand the role of the content, but do not automatically turn section names into cards.
Preserve meaningful hierarchy. For example:
Key Points overview → individual Key Point → list within that Key Point → details about individual list items
Place overview cards before their related detail cards.
A heading written in the form “Category: Item A | Item B | Item C” establishes an author-designated list. Create an overview card containing exactly those items, in that order, before the related detail cards. Do not add material from the supporting paragraphs to the overview list, and do not combine or split its items.
Answer Formatting
When an answer is a list, place each item on a separate line preceded immediately by an em dash.
Capitalize the first word of every list item.
For short phrases, do not insert blank lines between items:
—Entertainment
—Clothing
—Research
When list items are complete sentences, insert a blank line between them:
—Naturalness does not determine morality.
—Animal behavior is a poor basis for human morality.
Introductory text may precede a list when needed:
Exploitation for:
—Entertainment
—Clothing
—Research
Preserve this formatting inside the corresponding CSV Answer cell.
Use plain text in Question and Answer fields. Do not use Markdown formatting markers such as asterisks for italics or boldface, headings, or code fences unless the characters are themselves part of the source content.
Advocacy Resources and Advocacy Notes
Within Advocacy Resources, create flashcards from all substantive material under Socratic Questions and Advocacy Notes, including content inside collapsed or show/hide panels. Exclude sharing instructions, media-use instructions, Presentation Slides instructions, Flash Cards and Brainscape instructions, Outreach Cards, and similar general website-use or administrative material unless the user explicitly requests those subjects.
Preserve the panel’s displayed order, headings, overview structure, guidance, Socratic questions, and explanations labeled “Why?” or their equivalent.
Create overview cards for author-established sets of advocacy approaches before cards about the individual approaches.
When an Advocacy Notes answer draws on a suggested Socratic question, reproduce the actual question in quotation marks and introduce it with Ask, using this form:
Ask “Why do investigations continue to expose abuse if welfare laws and humane labels ensure animals’ well-being?”
Do not merely paraphrase a suggested question as “Ask why…” when the source supplies the question’s wording.
If an answer contains multiple suggested questions, be sure to treat the Ask “…” responses as a list of complete sentences: place each on its own line with an em dash, and leave a blank line between them. Preserve the questions’ order, then include the source’s substantive explanation of why they are useful after the list.
Advocacy cards must still stand independently and must not say “the briefing,” “the text,” or similar source-dependent phrases.
Review Process
Conduct the Review Process as a separate second pass after drafting the complete deck. Do not review only while drafting.
During this second pass, make a temporary coverage checklist from the source’s substantive headings, paragraphs, explicit and implicit lists, expandable content, Supplementary Information, Further Study, and Advocacy Notes. Compare every checklist item with the finished deck. The checklist does not need to be shown unless requested.
Perform a literal search of every Question and Answer for source-dependent terms such as “the briefing,” “the text,” “the article,” “the source,” and “according to.” Except for the fixed Card #1 metadata and Card #2, revise every source-dependent reference so the card speaks directly about its subject.
Compare every author-established overview list with the corresponding source heading or list. Verify that no item has been added, removed, combined, split, renamed, or reordered.
When regenerating or revising an existing deck, compare the new deck with the existing deck only when that deck has been explicitly attached to the current chat or included in the current Project’s Sources. Do not retrieve, reconstruct, or compare against decks remembered from other chats, projects, or memory. Account for every omitted, added, split, or consolidated card before treating the new deck as complete. If an existing deck has not been supplied through the current chat or Project Sources, complete the source-coverage review without claiming that a deck-to-deck comparison was performed.
Before presenting the deck, verify:
- All substantive portions of the briefing are represented.
- Expandable and collapsed content has been inspected.
- Advocacy Resources → Advocacy Notes is fully covered.
- Every author-designated Key Points section has a complete overview card followed by appropriate detail cards.
- Every genuine explicit or implicit list has an overview card where appropriate.
- Overview cards appear before their detail cards.
- No structure, hierarchy, list, category, or “main idea” has been invented.
- Other than the fixed Card #1 metadata and Card #2, no card refers to “the briefing,” “the text,” “this article,” or another source document.
- Every substantive card is understandable independently.
- List answers follow the em-dash, capitalization, and spacing rules.
- Advocacy questions use the exact
Ask “…”form. - Redundant cards have been consolidated without losing substantive coverage.
- The source’s meaning and important qualifications have been preserved.
- Any suspected source inconsistency has been reported separately and has not been corrected, re-scoped, omitted, or annotated inside the cards without user direction.
Before presenting the deck, provide a concise Coverage Report that maps every substantive source section and author-established list to the corresponding card number or numbers. Include Supplementary Info, Further Study, Socratic Questions, General Tips, and every Advocacy Notes panel. Identify and justify every intentional omission or consolidation. The Coverage Report is for review only and must not be included in the CSV.
CSV Requirements
The final CSV must contain exactly two columns:
- Question
- Answer
Each flashcard occupies one row.
Preserve the approved wording, formatting, and card order. In particular, retain overview cards before their related detail cards.
Do not add card numbers, section labels, citations, source fields, categories, tags, or additional columns unless specifically requested.
Name the file using this pattern:
[slug]: [Briefing Title without quotation marks or special characters].csv
Use the slug from the briefing URL, followed by a colon and a space. Remove quotation marks and replace other special characters in the title with spaces, then collapse repeated spaces.
Example:
nature: Nature Based Objections to Veganism.csv
Before delivering the CSV, verify the exact two-column structure, the approved card order, the paragraph spacing in Card #1, and the required filename—including the colon and space after the slug.
Flashcard Workflow
This section describes the human workflow involved in getting the flashcards published and can be ignored by AI.
Setting up ChatGPT Work
Create a Work Project in ChatGPT and place the following in settings -> Instructions:
For every flashcard-related request, first open https://vbriefings.org/docs/doc18654/ and read the complete “Flashcard Creation” section before beginning the task. Treat every requirement in that section as mandatory operating instructions, not merely reference material. Do not rely on memory or previously used flashcard rules. If the page or the “Flashcard Creation” section cannot be accessed completely, tell me and stop rather than creating the deck without those instructions. The “Flashcard Workflow” section is intended for humans and may be ignored unless I explicitly ask you to use it. After drafting the deck, perform the complete Review Process in that section as a separate second pass before presenting or exporting the deck.
Interacting with ChatGPT
Recommended Configuration
This is the currently tested configuration for creating vBriefings flashcards. If the named model is no longer available, use the current Sol model with Medium reasoning, then verify the resulting deck against the complete Review Process before adopting the replacement configuration.
Mode: ChatGPT Work
Execution: Cloud
Model: GPT-6 Astra
Reasoning level: Light
Last verified: September 2026
Project memory: Default
Note: Work in the cloud is not available in projects configured with Project-only memory.