Recall Review: AI That Builds Knowledge Bases from Your Content
Introduction
AI tools are becoming more and more common, one such tool is Recall. It helps users build a knowledge base for their projects by making transcripts of videos, summaries of articles and files, and even letting you talk with an AI about your articles. It even shows how all the articles in your project are connected. In this post we’ll walk through what Recall can do, how to use it and its drawbacks.
Getting Started
You can use recall on your web browser at https://www.recall.ai/ or use their mobile app. When you first open the app you are prompted to make an account. Afterwards, if you are on the website, it recommends using the browser extension. You do not have to install the extension, but doing so allows you to use Recall while browsing, which makes it much easier to use.
A Quick Demo showcasing how to use the browser extension version
Recall Cards
Recall cards are the basis of Recall they are intractable knowledge bases of your video or article that interact with your other cards. Making a card is quite simple using the website or app. To get started, hit the create card option. From there you can: either paste in a url, directly search google, upload a pdf, select one of your bookmarks or you can simply start your own notepad.
The user interface displayed when creating a new card
After that it will automatically create a Recall Card which looks like this.
A newly made card for a text based document, opened in the reader.
A newly made card for a video, featuring a transcript with timestamps in the reader
When you create a card, here's what happens:
First, your content gets prepared for reading. If it's an article, the full text appears in the reader section. For videos, you'll get a transcript with timestamps. On the website, this shows up in the middle of your screen. If you're using the extension, just look under the "Reader" tab.
A newly made card for a text based document using the extension
As part of this process, the system picks out important connection phrases and highlights them in yellow. You'll spot these same phrases later in the "Connections" tab when you need them.
An example showcasing how the system highlights connection phrases
Finally, the card gets organized with tags. These help sort your cards by topic so everything stays easy to find.
An example showcasing the articles sorted by their tags
In the photo, you can see all of my cards were automatically tagged with "de-extinction," grouping them together. Meanwhile, I manually added the "article" tag to my two cards by clicking the plus icon above each title and typing it in.
A Quick Demo on adding the article tag to a card
The last step happens in the notebook tab. This is where a summary is automatically generated. Depending on your settings, this is either a brief overview or a more detailed breakdown.
A showcase of the default option menu in settings
An example of a concise summary
You can also use the notebook tab like a notebook, adding your own notes and even connections. Recall also includes an AI chat in the chat section of your card or at the bottom of the browser extension. This allows you to ask for the other summary that isn't your default and ask questions about what's in your article. There is one limitation to keep in mind, the AI can only discuss content from the article itself. It won't be able to answer questions about unrelated topics or outside information. That said, any insights it does provide can be saved to your notebook with the "Add to Notebook" button.
An example of discussing an article with the AI
Recall Cards include a quiz tab, though this isn't available in the browser extension. The quiz tab lets you test yourself on the card's content using either auto-generated questions or ones you create yourself.
These quizzes follow Recall's review schedule system, which automatically adjusts how often you need to review material. The schedule is designed so you spend more time practicing what you struggle with and less time on what you already know well.
When you first create questions, they all get added to your review schedule. This helps the system identify which concepts need more attention. If you answer a question correctly, your next review dates for it will be set for 7 days later, then 30 days after that, then 6 months, the intervals grow longer each time you get it right.
However, if you get a question wrong at any point, regardless of how long it's been since your last review, that question automatically gets moved to the very next day's review session. This ensures you always focus on the material that needs the most work.
The manage card questions menu with an example question
The next two tabs in the Recall Card go hand in hand; these are the connections and graph tab. While the Graph tab isn't available in the browser extension, you can still use the Connections tab there. The connections tab will show all the links in the reader and notebook. It works in tandem with the Graph tab, which displays a graph of all connections across your Recall Cards. This lets you see which Recall Cards relate to each other and how they connect.
An example of the connections menu with all of the links in the article
The yellow dot is the article you are currently on and the different colored lines are for the different articles. In this example the graph is made up of three articles with “The Return of the Dire Wolf” which is the node in the bottom middle that has light blue arrows coming off it, “Scientists: Dire wolf brought back from extinction after 13,000 years” which is the node on the left that has green arrows coming from it, and “Scientists say they have resurrected the dire wolf | CNN” which is the yellow node at the top center that has dark blue arrows coming off it.
Example graph with three different articles
Additionally you can use the graph option on the left side of the site to get a larger graph and select different headings to help control what shows up on your graph.
Graph showing connections between cards with the ‘article’ tag
The next section on the left is the review section where Recall will have you review the questions that are on your recall cards. It even allows you to peek and go to your card if you can't remember the answer. When you get a question wrong, the quiz loops back, making you retry until you answer all ten correctly.
An example of a question
Example of a Recall Review Graph
Finally there is your settings tabs. Here, you can switch between dark and light mode, choose your default summary type, and enable summary translation if needed. You can also set your search language, opt in for email reminders to keep up with reviews, and adjust extension settings. The tab also includes options to export your data, upgrade to Recall Plus, or delete your account (located at the bottom of the settings menu).
Overview of the Settings option
With all these features, Recall does have one major limitation: the free version only allows you to create ten cards. To make more, you'll need to upgrade to Recall Plus, which costs either $10 a month or $70 a year for an annual subscription.
Conclusion
After trying out Recall, I’ve found it most useful for tasks like transcribing videos, visualizing how concepts connect through the graph, and creating quick quizzes to reinforce information. These features make it a handy tool for organizing and reviewing material in a more interactive way.
That said, there are still a few friction points. The free version limits you to just ten cards, which can feel restrictive, and being confined to viewing only one card at a time in a section can break the flow when you're trying to see the bigger picture.
Tools like Recall point toward a future where learning and project planning become more intuitive, connected, and interactive. In the future, I’d like to see Recall adjust its card limit. A maximum of ten cards feels overly restrictive considering I’ve already used six just getting familiar with the system. I also hope they add a feature to chat about all cards under a specific tag, similar to the tag graph functionality. It’s exciting to see how this kind of technology is opening up new ways to think, create, and stay organized.
-Joseph Lewis
