I was studying every day and still blanking in exams. So I built the fix.

DEVICHARAN GEDDADA — Thu, 07 May 2026 06:03:43 +0000

There's a specific kind of frustration that comes from doing everything right and still failing.
I was putting in the hours. Going through every chapter before exams. Color-coding notes. Marking units as done. Feeling that quiet confidence the night before — "okay, I'm ready."
Then sitting in the exam hall and the question appears and there's just... nothing there.
Not a vague memory. Not a foggy outline. Nothing.
I spent a long time thinking this was a discipline problem. A focus problem. A "I didn't study enough" problem. I'd double down each time — more hours, more coverage, more highlighting.
Same result.

The thing nobody teaches you
At some point I fell into a research rabbit hole about memory science and it reframed everything.
The core insight: reading is recognition, not recall.
When you read your notes, your brain sees the information and says "yes, I know this." That feels like learning. It isn't. Recognition is almost useless for exam performance, because exams don't show you the answer and ask you to nod — they ask you to produce it from nothing.
What actually builds memory is retrieval practice — forcing your brain to pull information out without looking at it. Every time you successfully retrieve something, the pathway gets stronger. Every time you fail to retrieve it, you find out exactly what needs more work.
This is why flashcard systems work when used properly. Not because flashcards are magic — because they force retrieval instead of recognition.
The algorithm that does this best is called SM2 (SuperMemo 2). It calculates the optimal moment to show you a card again — right before you'd naturally forget it. Space the reviews perfectly, and you build durable memory with the minimum amount of time.
Medical students use this to memorize thousands of drug interactions. Language learners use it to retain vocabulary across years. Engineering students almost never use it because nobody told them it exists.

Why I built something instead of just using Anki
Anki is the standard SM2 tool. It's powerful. I tried it.
It also felt completely foreign to how I actually study.
No PYQ (Previous Year Question) bank for any Indian university. No awareness of the JNTU syllabus structure I was working with. No way to track mastery by topic the way my actual exam preparation is organized. The workflow didn't map to anything I recognized.
I looked for alternatives. Nothing fit.
So in late 2024, I started building ExamFlowOS.
I'm an EEE student from Visakhapatnam. I had no team. I had time I carved out from an engineering degree. I had frustration, which turns out to be decent fuel.

What I actually built

ExamFlowOS

is an exam prep system built specifically for the way Indian university students actually study.
The core loop looks like this:
Import your syllabus (PDF or paste text)
↓
AI parses it into Subject → Units → Topics
↓
Add flashcards to each topic
↓
SM2 algorithm schedules your reviews
↓
Study in timed focus sessions
↓
Real-time mastery score per topic
The difference from a normal checklist: the system knows the difference between "I covered this" and "I can actually retrieve this."
The PYQ bank
This was the feature that made it specifically useful for AP and Telangana students.
I built a database of previous year questions from:

BTech: JNTU Kakinada, JNTU Anantapur, JNTU Hyderabad, Andhra University
Diploma: SBTET Andhra Pradesh, SBTET Telangana
Degree (UG): Osmania University, Kakatiya University, Andhra University, Krishna University, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Yogi Vemana University, SPMVV
Intermediate: BIEAP, TSBIE

The match confidence slider controls how strictly questions need to match your topic. "Show more" casts a wider net. "Strict" pins to exact topic matches.
The idea: you're studying Unit 3, Topic: EMF Equation of DC Generator. The system shows you the actual questions JNTU has asked about this specific topic in past years. You see what kind of answers they want. You practice accordingly.
The focus engine
Pomodoro timer with ambient audio. White noise, brown noise, pink noise, rain, ocean, forest, cafe sounds, fire crackling.
Lock-in mode: you can't navigate away mid-session. The door is locked until the timer ends.
I added this because I kept breaking focus to "just check one thing" and losing 20 minutes. The lock-in is aggressive but it works.
Offline-first
All your data lives on your device. No account. No login. No server knowing your study habits.
Export your data as JSON anytime. Import it back. Your streak and card history is yours.

Things I learned building this solo
Migrating from Supabase to local-first mid-project is painful. I started with Supabase because that was the obvious choice for storing user data. Somewhere around month 4, I realized that requiring an account was creating friction for the exact students I was building for. Ripping out the database layer and replacing it with client-side persistence while keeping everything working took two weeks I didn't have. Worth it.
SM2 is elegant but requires careful tuning. The algorithm itself is mathematically simple — a few formulas calculating the next review interval based on your rating. Getting it to feel right took much longer. The gap between "technically correct" and "feels natural to use" is significant.
AI syllabus parsing took way more iterations than expected. The obvious approach (send the PDF, ask for structured output) works for clean, well-formatted syllabuses. Real university syllabuses are not clean or well-formatted. Getting reliable extraction across the different formats I was seeing required significant prompt engineering and fallback logic.
Building for yourself first makes every decision easier. I was my own first user from day one. Every feature existed because I needed it. "Would this actually help me study?" is a much clearer question than "would users like this?" The product coherence you get from building something you genuinely use is hard to fake.

Where it is now ↓

Live at examflowos.vercel.app.

37+ deployments since I started pushing to production. I've been iterating continuously — the most recent push was two hours before I'm writing this.
Features currently working:

Syllabus tracker with AI extraction
SM2 recall engine with 5 study modes
PYQ bank for 14+ AP & Telangana universities
Focus engine with ambient audio and lock-in mode
Live analytics (streak, accuracy, mastery by topic)
Multi-language interface (6 Indian languages)
Offline-first with JSON export/import

Mobile app is in progress — the Capacitor config is already set up, so it's closer than it sounds.

Try it
Free. No account. Works in your browser right now.
examflowos.vercel.app
If you're preparing for any JNTU, Andhra University, SBTET, AU, or intermediate exam — this was built specifically for your situation.

About me
I'm Devicharan Geddada. I'm an EEE student from Visakhapatnam. I also do video editing (DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro) and AI workflow development.
ExamFlowOS is one of three things I'm actively building:

ExamFlowOS — this thing

Echoless — a private multi-model AI system I use personally (multiple LLMs running in parallel, outputs synthesized — my research into AI coordination, not released publicly)
Perfect Pack — professional asset pack for DaVinci Resolve editors (launching soon)

Portfolio: geddadadevicharan.vercel.app
GitHub: @imdvichrn
Instagram: @imdvichrn
LinkedIn: Devicharan Geddada

If this helped you or you have feedback — I read everything. DM me or open an issue on GitHub.

Forem: DEVICHARAN GEDDADA

I was studying every day and still blanking in exams. So I built the fix.

ExamFlowOS

*Where it is now *↓

Where it is now ↓