Frequently asked questions
About the method
Why don't hours count towards mastery?
Because time measures effort, not what stuck. Two hours of rereading can leave you with less than 30 minutes of testing yourself (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Hours are shown, but as context.
Why do I have to give my confidence before marking?
Because once you've seen the answers it's no longer a prediction. Comparing what you expected with what you got right — calibration — shows where the feeling of "I already know this" misleads you (Bjork, 1994), and those subjects move to the top.
I don't know anything about a subject yet. How does it measure my level?
It doesn't at the start — and rightly so. Without tests, mastery stays at "still to learn". In the first weeks you study new material (doing it in blocks is fine). The first closed-book test measures only the material you've already covered, not the whole subject.
What if the lecturer doesn't provide past exams?
Exercises are enough. The effect comes from retrieving from memory without looking anything up, not from where the questions come from. Keep a few exercises from each problem sheet unsolved and use them in your closed-book tests, mixing topics.
Can I use AI to study?
Yes — after you've tried. A tutor that gives answers boosts performance with help and lowers performance without it (Bastani et al.). That's why practice with AI is logged separately, and the app warns you when you rely on help. Estudar's AI only organises the plan; it never solves exercises.
Why doesn't the app have a question bank?
Not yet — it's on the roadmap. An item bank needs quality content for each subject; wrong items generated by AI would do more harm than good. The current version works with your own exercises on paper, which is how exams usually are.
About the degree record and grades
The average doesn't match the one from academic services
The app uses the ECTS-weighted average of passed modules, truncated to 2 decimal places (grades are on the Portuguese 0–20 scale; 9.5 is a pass). Check that every passed module has a grade and ECTS credits, and that credit transfers (CC) are marked as passed. If your course calculates it differently, open an issue.
My module has continuous assessment with a minimum grade
Create one row per component in Assessments, with its weight and minimum grade. If a grade falls below the minimum, the module becomes "failed" at that point and the app asks for the resit date.
What about the resit and the special period?
Add an assessment with the Resit or Special period. Once it has a grade, it replaces the regular exam period result. Until then, its date becomes the module's exam date in the plan.
I have credit transfers (CC)
Set the type to CC and enter the grade. They count towards the average as passed and work as prerequisites.
About installation
Do I need to pay for anything?
Not for personal use: Supabase, Cloudflare Workers and Gemini have free tiers that are enough. With Claude or OpenAI you pay for AI requests (a few per week).
I'm not receiving the email with the code
- Check your spam folder.
- With the email built into Supabase, only members of the project's team receive emails, and there are hourly limits. For other people, set up your own SMTP.
- Check that the email template contains
{{ .Token }}(the Set up button does this for you).
Sign-in asks for an authorised domain
Add the app's address under Authentication → URL Configuration → Redirect URLs in Supabase. The Set up button does this for localhost; the Worker's address is added automatically when you publish if you pasted the token in that same npx estudar session — otherwise, click Set up again after publishing.
I changed the code and can't see the changes
The service worker always fetches the latest version when there's a connection and reloads the page when a new version takes over. If you still see the old one, reload once.