An AI study coach for people with ADHD. Works for any subject, in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and more.
It quizzes you on old stuff, teaches new stuff in tiny pieces, and makes you explain it back. You never have to remember to ask for review.
1. Copy the coach. Go to the website and press the big Copy button. (No button? Open this page, press Ctrl+A then Ctrl+C; Mac: Cmd+A, Cmd+C.)
2. Paste it into a new chat in the AI you already use (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, anything) and press send.
3. Type new, then tell it what you want to learn. Example: let's study photosynthesis.
That's it. It asks 3 quick questions the first time, then you're studying.
Chats forget. So at the end of each session the coach gives you a small block of text called a Progress Card.
- Save it anywhere (Notes app, a document, email to yourself).
- Paste it at the start of your next chat, after the coach.
That's how it knows what to quiz you on.
Want it set up permanently? See setup for each app: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, OpenCode, Command Code, OpenRouter.
Progress saves automatically, so no Progress Card is needed.
/plugin marketplace add itsAalaa7/adhd-study-coach
/plugin install adhd-study-coach@adhd-study-coach-marketplace
Then say let's study X, quiz me, I'm done for today, or how am I doing lately.
Claude app (claude.ai / Desktop) skill: download adhd-study-coach-skill.zip, then Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill.
Two facts, one plan:
| Fact | Source |
|---|---|
| What works for learning is already well known: test yourself, and space it out. | Strong general-population science |
| What's hard for ADHD brains is keeping on doing it: starting, tracking time, waiting for payoff, feeling shame. | ADHD research |
So this plugin doesn't invent a new "ADHD study method." It takes the proven method and removes the ADHD-specific barriers to doing it.
The agent picks the mode itself. You don't choose.
| # | Mode | When | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Onboarding | First time only | 3 questions, then straight into studying |
| 1 | Warm-up | Something is due for review | Quizzes you on old topics before new ones |
| 2 | Teach | You want something new | Small chunks, one question at a time |
| 3 | Reflect | You say "I'm done" | Interviews you, saves a note (+ optional Anki cards) |
| 4 | Check-in | Every ~5 sessions | Finds your patterns, tells you what to adopt / drop / do next |
Every rule in the agent has a reason. Here's the short version.
Full citations and honest strength ratings → RESEARCH.md.
| Feature | The science | What you'll notice |
|---|---|---|
| Quizzes, not re-reading | Retrieval practice. Testing yourself beats re-studying (Roediger & Karpicke 2006; meta-analysis of 217 studies, Adesope et al. 2017). | Warm-ups are questions, never "read your notes again." |
| Spaced review | Spacing effect. Reviewing at growing gaps beats cramming (Cepeda et al. 2006; 317 experiments). | Topics come back at 1 → 3 → 7 → 16 → 35 → 90 days. |
| Tiny chunks | Cognitive load theory (Sweller). Working memory is limited. ADHD adults and children show large working-memory differences (Kasper et al. 2012; Alderson et al. 2013). | 4–5 lines per idea. One question per message. |
| Worked examples that fade | Full examples help while learning; too much help later backfires (expertise-reversal effect). | First time: fully shown. Later: you do more of it. |
| "It should feel hard" | Desirable difficulties (Bjork & Bjork). Effortful recall sticks better than easy review. | It tells you why it's uncomfortable. |
| Stop the low-value habits | Highlighting, re-reading and summarizing rate low utility (Dunlosky et al. 2013). | One-line redirect to testing yourself. No lecture. |
| Feature | The science | What you'll notice |
|---|---|---|
| Teach-it-back at the end | Self-explanation / generation effect. Explaining in your own words improves understanding. | Reflect mode is an interview, not a summary written for you. |
| Mixed topics in warm-up | Interleaving (Rohrer & Taylor 2007). Real effect, smaller and less consistent than testing or spacing. | Due topics are mixed together. |
| Instant feedback | Delay aversion (Sonuga-Barke). ADHD reward systems respond poorly to "payoff later." | Every answer is graded right away as solid / shaky / blank. Never "wrong." |
| Visible progress line | One pediatric ADHD trial found gamified learning helped (2025 RCT, n=80). Applying it to adults is an inference. | One line after warm-up: ✅ 3 solid · 🟡 1 shaky. |
| Auto-start, no "remember to ask" | CHADD / NICE guidance: supports that need self-activation get underused. | Warm-up and check-ins run on their own. |
| Time shown for you | Time blindness (Barkley). Sense of elapsed time is unreliable in ADHD. | Plain time checkpoints: "~10 min in." |
| Feature | Honest status |
|---|---|
| Tiny first step (against "Wall of Awful") | Clinical framework, not a tested finding. Low risk, so it stays. |
| Never shame | Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria has very little direct research. Not shaming a learner is good practice anyway. |
| Body-doubling offer | Anecdotal only. Optional, and it never claims to be as good as the strong stuff. |
The gap, stated plainly: there is very little research that tests spaced repetition or AI tutoring specifically on ADHD learners. Most of the proven techniques come from general-population studies. The ADHD research explains why the barriers are real. That's an honest limit, not a hidden one.
- ✂️ Small. Max 4–5 lines per section. One core idea, bolded.
- 🎯 One question at a time. Scenario-based ("you do X and Y happens — why?"), never "define X."
- ⏱️ Time is external. It tells you the time so your brain doesn't have to track it.
- 🏁 65% is "done enough." If the timebox ends, the rest becomes an open item. You end on a win.
- 🧠 Memorize vs. look up. It says which is which, so not everything feels equally heavy.
- 💛 No shame. Missed a week? Coming back is the skill.
Everything is local, in the plugin's data folder. Nothing is sent anywhere by this plugin.
If the data-folder variable isn't available, it falls back to ~/.adhd-study-coach/ and tells you once.
<data dir>/
├── profile.json # subjects, cadence, what it learned about how you learn
├── review-schedule.json # spaced-repetition schedule, one entry per topic
├── sessions.log.jsonl # one line per session (used for check-ins)
└── notes/<subject>/
├── <topic>.md # your reflection note
└── flashcards/<topic>.txt # optional Anki import file
Personal data lives in profile.json, never in the shared agent file.
| Network access | ❌ None. The plugin makes no network calls. |
| Hooks / scripts / MCP servers | ❌ None. It's a single Markdown agent file. |
| Tools the agent may use | Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Bash, PowerShell — limited to the data folder by its own rules |
| Files it touches | Only the data folder above |
| Stored content treated as | Data, never instructions (guards against injected text in old notes) |
Read the agent yourself — it's one file: agents/adhd-study-coach.md.
You: quiz me
Coach: 2 things are due: "photosynthesis: light reactions", "cell membranes".
Starting with the first. ~5 min.
A plant sits in green light only. What happens to its rate of
photosynthesis, and why?
You: it slows a lot because chlorophyll reflects green
Coach: Solid. ✅ Chlorophyll absorbs mostly red and blue, so green light
drives little of the reaction. Next one…
…
✅ 2 solid · 🟡 1 shaky · streak on "cell membranes": 3
Ready for something new, or stop here?
Bugs and ideas: GitHub Issues.
Security concerns: see SECURITY.md.
An earlier version had four agents (teacher, reviewer, quizzer, analyst). It worked, but the review agent only ran if you remembered to call it — and that's exactly the thing ADHD makes hard. One agent that runs its own warm-up removes that failure by design, not by asking you to try harder.
This is a study aid. It's not a diagnosis, treatment, or medical device, and it doesn't replace clinical care. If you want treatment, talk to a clinician.
RESEARCH.md was compiled with AI-assisted literature search. The citations are believed accurate but have not been verified against the original papers. Please check before citing them academically or clinically, and open an issue or PR if you spot an error.
Welcome:
- Citation corrections
- Places where the agent breaks its own rules
- Places it wrongly assumes a coding context (it should work for any subject)
Open an issue or PR.
MIT — see LICENSE.