What / and @ mean when you study with AskNotes

Blank AI chat invites vague prompts. “Help me study biology” can mean anything, so the model invents a curriculum. AskNotes uses two tokens on purpose. / points at what to use. @ says what to do. Together they keep AI grounded in your notes instead of drifting into generic answers — and they make the workflow visible enough to become a habit.

This guide explains each token in depth, how they combine, what good prompts look like, and how to avoid the failure modes that waste credits without improving recall.

The mental model: material first, action second

Every useful study request has two parts, whether you write them or not: which material, and which cognitive job. Students often skip the first and jump to the second — “make flashcards” — then wonder why the deck feels generic. Slash forces the first decision. At-actions make the second explicit.

Think of / as a lens. Think of @ as a machine that runs on whatever the lens is pointed at. No lens, no trustworthy machine output.

/ scopes the material

Type / to pick a subject or a specific note — for example /accounting or /lecture4. You can also link pictures and sources the same way. Scope tells the model which pile of notes matters for this question. Narrower scopes produce more precise drills; wider scopes are for synthesis and gap-finding across a course.

Subject scope

Use a subject when you want coverage: weekly review, “what have I missed since midterms,” or a broad quiz before you know which lecture is weak. Subject scope is powerful and easy to overuse. If the subject is huge and messy, start narrower until the archive is organised.

Note scope

Use a single note when you just left a lecture, when one chapter is dense, or when a quiz keeps failing on one topic. Note scope is the default for deep work. It also makes verification easier: you can scroll the note while you check the AI output.

Resources: pictures, videos, sources

Lectures are not only text. Diagrams, slide screenshots, and linked articles often hold the example that will appear on the exam. Linking them into the note — and referencing them with / — keeps those assets inside the same study loop instead of stranded in a camera roll.

• /subject — study across a whole course folder
• /note — zoom into one lecture or chapter
• /picture or /source — pull linked resources into context
• Open a note or subject first when you want AskNotes to default the scope for you

@ runs a study action

Actions are short verbs that map to how students actually revise. They are not magic — they are templates for outcomes you can use. Prefer them when you want something testable. Use free-form questions when you want explanation, comparison, or a walkthrough of a single confusing paragraph.

Compression actions

@summarize and outline-style requests compress a lecture into a structure you can scan. Use them right after class to check completeness, or before a quiz to rebuild the map in your head. Do not stop at the summary. Compression without retrieval is still passive reading with better formatting.

Retrieval actions

@quiz and @exam force you to answer. Quizzes are for frequent, low-stakes practice. Exam-style prompts lean harder: longer questions, more synthesis, closer to how papers are written. Use quizzes weekly; reserve exam mode for the final stretch so you do not burn out on high-intensity drills too early.

Memory actions

@flashcards turns definitions, frameworks, and paired ideas into a deck. Best after a quiz has revealed which terms slip. Short fronts, precise backs, wording from your notes. A deck generated from thin notes will be thin — improve the note, then regenerate the weak cards.

Understanding actions

Explain, ELI5, examples, and gap-finding help when you are stuck, not when you are polishing. Ask “where are the gaps in /lecture4?” after a rough capture. Ask “explain this like I’m five using /lecture4” when a definition refuses to stick. Then go back to quiz.

Combining / and @ in real prompts

A typical prompt looks like @summarize /accounting — or @quiz after you have already opened a note. Order can vary; clarity cannot. Name the action and the material. Optional constraints help: “10 questions,” “only definitions,” “focus on the agency theory section,” “harder than last time.”

• @summarize /lecture-4 — quick map after class
• @quiz /microeconomics — weekly retrieval across the subject
• @flashcards /lecture-4 — lock terms you missed in the quiz
• @exam /corporate-finance — late-stage practice with synthesis
• Free-form: “Compare the two pricing models in /lecture-6 and say which assumptions differ”

Defaults when a subject or note is already open

If you are inside a subject or note, AskNotes can assume that scope so you do not retype / every time. That is ideal for flow: open lecture 4, hit @quiz, drill, clarify, drill again. When you switch intent — “actually quiz the whole subject” — re-scope explicitly so the model does not stay stuck on the open note.

Why commands beat blank chat for habits

Habits need a small number of repeatable moves. Commands shrink the decision space: choose material, choose action, get an artefact. Over weeks you build muscle memory — after every lecture, summarize then quiz; every Sunday, subject quiz then flashcards on misses. Blank chat keeps reinventing the workflow, which is why study AI often dies after midterms.

Failure modes to watch

• Action without scope — you get fluent garbage; always attach / or open the right note
• Scope that is too wide for messy notes — organise first, or quiz lecture by lecture
• Generating five summaries of the same note — one is enough; spend the next credits on retrieval
• Never verifying against the source — if a quiz question feels off, check the note and fix the note
• Treating @ as the only interface — free-form questions are still useful for stuck moments

A one-week command routine

After each lecture: capture notes, @summarize that note, fix anything missing, @quiz the note. Mid-week: @quiz the subject for the week’s lectures. Weekend: @flashcards on the topics you missed, then a short re-quiz. Exam fortnight: replace one weekly quiz with @exam on the subject, still feeding misses back into cards.

The tokens are simple on purpose. Depth comes from using them on a growing archive of your own material — not from writing longer prompts to a model that has never seen your course.