Verified against ChatGPT · 2026-08-09
Build a spaced repetition schedule that actually lands your last review one or two days before the exam, not after
Calculates a review-interval schedule for a specific set of topics, working backward from your exam date so the final scheduled review falls at the right moment before the test instead of drifting past it.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
Build me a spaced repetition schedule for the topics below, working backward from my exam date so the review intervals actually land before the exam instead of running past it. EXAM DATE 22 September 2026 TOPICS AND WHEN I FIRST LEARNED EACH ONE Cell biology - learned 3 July, Genetics - learned 20 July, Evolution - learned 5 August, Ecology - learned 12 August INTERVAL PREFERENCE Roughly 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 16 days, 35 days between reviews, expanding each time DAILY REVIEW CAPACITY No more than 2 topics reviewed on any single day, roughly 45 minutes each RULES For each topic, calculate review dates using the interval pattern given, starting from the date I first learned it, and check whether the naturally-expanding intervals would push a review past the exam date — if a topic's next natural interval would land after the exam, compress that interval down instead of letting the schedule silently skip a review the topic actually needs before test day. Every topic must have its final review land in the 1-2 days immediately before the exam, regardless of what the natural interval progression would otherwise produce, since a spaced repetition schedule that isn't anchored to end at the right moment is optimizing for long-term retention at the expense of the one date that actually matters here. When multiple topics' review dates land on the same day, check that day's combined review load against my stated daily capacity — if it's over capacity, tell me explicitly which topics to combine into a shorter combined review or shift by a day, rather than producing a schedule that assumes I have more time on that date than I actually do. Do not silently invent a first-learned date for any topic I didn't give one for — list those separately and ask me to fill them in rather than guessing. OUTPUT FORMAT A table: Topic | Review dates (in order) | Notes on any interval compression applied and why. Followed by a separate line flagging any day where combined review load exceeds stated daily capacity, with a suggested fix.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
A standard spaced-repetition interval sequence is designed for indefinite long-term retention and has no inherent awareness of a hard deadline, so GPT-5.1 asked to "apply spaced repetition" without an anchoring instruction will project intervals forward from the first-learned date and let them land wherever the arithmetic naturally puts them — which for a topic learned early enough can mean the last calculated review falls weeks after the exam has already happened, quietly wasting the schedule's most important review on the wrong side of test day. Requiring every topic's final review to land in the 1-2 days before the exam regardless of the natural progression forces the model to work the problem backward as well as forward, checking each topic's trajectory against the fixed endpoint and compressing intervals where needed, which is a different and more constrained calculation than simply iterating a formula forward. The daily-capacity cross-check exists because expanding-interval schedules across multiple topics started on different dates will mathematically cluster several topics' review dates onto the same day with some regularity — without an explicit instruction to check combined load against a stated capacity, the model has no reason to notice that a given day's schedule silently assumes more available time than the student actually has, since each topic's interval was calculated independently of the others. The refusal to invent missing first-learned dates matters because a fabricated starting date would silently corrupt every downstream interval calculated from it, producing a schedule that looks precise while being anchored to a made-up fact.
What you get back
Ecology | Reviews: 13 Aug, 16 Aug, 23 Aug, 8 Sep, 20 Sep | Note: natural next interval after 8 Sep would be ~35 days (13 Oct), well past the 22 Sep exam — compressed to 20 Sep so the final review lands 2 days before test day. Flag: 20 Sep has both Ecology and Genetics scheduled, totaling ~90 min against your 2-topic/day capacity — no fix needed, but Evolution's 21 Sep review should not be added to the same day.
Verified against
ChatGPT GPT-5.1 · 2026-08-09
Changelog
- 2026-08-09 — Initial publish, verified against ChatGPT GPT-5.1.
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