CardGenie

CardGenie is an iOS 26-only flashcard and study app built around local-first storage and on-device AI. Notes, scans, flashcards, study history, and AI-assisted flows stay on the device. The app does not rely on network services, analytics, or cloud sync.

Product Focus

• Generate flashcards from text, scans, PDFs, handwriting, and lecture notes.
• Study with spaced repetition, game modes, chat, voice tutoring, and conversational learning.
• Use Apple’s on-device models when the current device and language support them.
• Fall back honestly when on-device AI is unavailable instead of implying a cloud dependency.

Reliability Model

Recent hardening work focuses on making the offline contract explicit and recoverable:

• The app is treated as iOS 26-only throughout the UI and runtime.
• App bootstrap now uses explicit runtime states: ready, degradedInMemory, and unavailable.
• Persistence failures no longer crash the app; temporary in-memory mode is surfaced in the UI.
• Pending scan jobs are stored in SwiftData and resume across relaunches.
• AI capability messaging is shared across chat, voice, content generation, and study assistance.
• Retrieval uses embedding freshness metadata and bounded candidate selection instead of naive fetch-all ranking.
• The flashcard flow now surfaces a due-now summary and can resume the last unfinished study session.

Requirements

• Xcode 17 or later
• iOS 26 SDK
• Deployment target: iOS 26.0
• A device or language configuration supported by Apple’s on-device models for AI-heavy features

CardGenie remains usable without the on-device model. Manual study flows, scanning, browsing, editing, and spaced-repetition review remain local.

Build

# Generic simulator build
xcodebuild -project CardGenie.xcodeproj -scheme CardGenie -sdk iphonesimulator -destination 'generic/platform=iOS Simulator' build

# Discover a concrete iOS 26.x simulator when you want to run locally
xcrun simctl list devices available | rg 'iOS 26'

The current hardening pass was validated with:

xcodebuild -project CardGenie.xcodeproj -scheme CardGenie -sdk iphonesimulator -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 17 Pro,OS=26.3.1' build

Architecture

• CardGenie/App: app bootstrap, runtime state, permissions, intents
• CardGenie/Data: SwiftData models, vector storage, spaced repetition, exporters
• CardGenie/Processors: scan, OCR, PDF, lecture, and flashcard generation pipelines
• CardGenie/Intelligence: Foundation Models integration, safety handling, retrieval, prompts, session management
• CardGenie/Features: SwiftUI screens for study, flashcards, scanning, voice, chat, content generation, and settings
• CardGenie/Design: Liquid Glass styling, reusable components, motion helpers

Privacy

• No network API is required at runtime
• No analytics or telemetry
• No cloud sync
• No server-side AI fallback
• All user data stays in local app storage

Notes for Contributors

• Treat the app as iOS 26-only.
• Keep unavailable AI states explicit and local.
• Prefer resilient degradation over crashes.
• Do not reintroduce checked-in docs trees or build logs.