Flashcards, Journal and Habits: a first week with BrainLoop, click by click
By Thomas Lovas Lokoy
Founder & builder of BrainLoop (NorwegianSpark SA). Every button and behaviour described here was read from the app's code, not remembered.
Last updated: October 2026 · By Thomas Lovas Lokoy, founder & builder of BrainLoop. Drafted with AI assistance and checked against the app's code. The week plan is a suggestion, not a clinical programme.
Most people who land on BrainLoop open the same three apps first: Flashcards, Journal and Habits. This is a tutorial for exactly those three, written the way I would explain them over your shoulder: what each click does, what gets saved, and the small behaviours that surprise people. Spread over a week it is a realistic first run; squeeze it into an evening if you prefer.
Days 1 and 2: Flashcards
Open Flashcards. You see a text box with a Generate button, three deck tabs, a counter line, and one large card.
Start with a built-in deck. The three tabs are JavaScript Basics, World Capitals and AI & Machine Learning, five cards each. Pick one. The counter reads something like Card 1 of 5 · Score: 0/0.
The loop is strict on purpose. The card shows a question and the hint "Click to reveal answer". Commit to an answer in your head before you click. Then click: the card flips to the answer and two buttons appear, Didn't Know and Got It! Pressing either one records your self-grade, flips the card back, and moves to the next question. There is no way to skip the grading step, because the grade is the exercise.
Scoring. The score counts every grade you give in that deck session: Score: 3/4 means four cards graded, three marked Got It!. When you pass the last card the deck wraps round to card 1, so a second pass keeps adding to the same score. Switching to another deck tab resets the counter to 0/0.
Generating a deck. Type a topic into the box (up to 200 characters, so "Photosynthesis light reactions" is fine, an essay is not) and press Generate. The app asks the AI for six question-and-answer cards. When they arrive, the new deck appears as the first tab, is selected, and the score resets. If the AI cannot make a usable deck from the topic you get a short notice and the built-in decks stay available.
The two things people trip over:
- Generated decks are not saved. Reload the page and only the three built-in decks are there. If a deck is worth keeping, note the topic you typed; regenerating it costs one more AI generation and will not produce identical cards.
- Each generation counts against your daily allowance (5 a day without an account, 10 on Free, more on paid plans; the full table is in the limits tutorial). Flipping and grading cards costs nothing.
A sensible first two days: one built-in deck on day 1 until you can score 5/5 on a pass, then one generated deck on day 2 on something you actually need to learn.
Days 3 and 4: Journal
Open Journal. The card shows today's date, a prompt in quotation marks, a row of five mood faces, a text area and Save Entry.
Prompts. The first prompt you see is one of five built in. Press ✨ New prompt and the app asks the AI for three prompts matched to the mood you have selected (if any), then shows one of them. If the AI is unavailable or you have hit your daily limit, you silently get one of the built-in prompts instead; the button still works. Each press of New prompt is one AI generation.
What is sent, and what is not. Only your mood label (for example "Okay") is sent when you ask for a prompt. Your entry text is never sent anywhere. It is saved in your browser's local storage on this device. There is no cloud copy, which is a privacy feature and a backup limitation in one.
Moods. The five faces are Great, Good, Okay, Low and Bad. Click one to select it; it enlarges and gets a border. The mood is optional, but it is what the New prompt button uses to shape the next prompt.
Saving. Type, then press Save Entry. The entry appears at the top of Past Entries with the date and your mood face; the text box and mood clear; and the app automatically fetches a fresh prompt for next time. That automatic fetch is also one AI generation, so on the Free plan a day of two entries plus two manual New prompt presses uses four of your ten.
Reading back. Past entries are listed newest first and are read-only. There is no edit or delete inside the app yet. If you want to erase them, clear the site's data in your browser; BrainLoop has no copy to restore from, so that is permanent.
Two days of journaling is enough to feel whether the prompts help. If you want evidence on what journaling can and cannot do for stress, that is a separate article: does journaling help with stress?
Days 5 to 7: Habits
Open Habits. The top line shows 0/5 today and a progress bar; below it, five habits; at the bottom, an Add a new habit box.
The starter habits are examples. Exercise 30 min, Read 20 pages, Meditate, Drink 8 glasses water and No social media before noon arrive with streak numbers already filled in (5, 12, 3, 8 and 2 days). Those numbers are placeholders so the screen does not look empty; they are not a record of anything you did. Add your own habit on day 5 with the box at the bottom and the Enter key or Add, and it starts at a 0-day streak.
Ticking. Click a habit row to tick it. The ring fills with a check mark, the row turns mint, the streak goes up by one and the progress bar advances. Click again to untick: the streak goes back down by one. The count at the top is simply ticked habits over total habits for today.
Midnight. Ticks are tied to the local calendar day. Open the app tomorrow and every habit is unticked again, ready for a new day, while the streak numbers carry over. This is what makes a streak possible.
What the streak actually measures. Be clear-eyed about this one: the streak is a running count of ticks. It goes up when you tick and down when you untick, and it does not reset itself if you skip a day. So a "12 day streak" means twelve ticks, not necessarily twelve consecutive days. If consecutive-day streaks matter to you, keep yourself honest, or treat the number as a total rather than a chain.
No delete yet. You can add habits but not remove them in the app. If the starter habits are not yours, leave them unticked; they will not affect the streaks of the ones you add. Clearing the site's data in your browser removes everything, including your own habits.
Where it lives. Habits, ticks and streaks are stored in this browser only. Your phone and laptop will each have their own list.
A week that actually fits
- Day 1: one built-in deck to 5/5.
- Day 2: one generated deck on something real.
- Day 3: journal, pick a mood, use the prompt you are given.
- Day 4: journal, press New prompt once to see a mood-matched one.
- Day 5: add one habit of your own; tick it.
- Days 6 and 7: tick the habit, run yesterday's deck again, write a few lines.
That is roughly ten AI generations across the whole week, which fits in the signed-out allowance alone (5 a day) and comfortably in Free. Everything else, the grading, the ticking, the saving, is free and instant because it happens in your browser.
Three honest caveats before you commit
- One device. Nothing syncs. Choose the device you will actually use.
- Clearing storage is final. There is no undo and no restore.
- The streak counts ticks, not consecutive days. Decide what it means to you.
The rest of the suite (Focus Timer, Goals, Finance, Trivia, Word Puzzles, Oracle, Advisor and Tarot) is mapped in How BrainLoop works. Start with the Flashcards loop; the first honest Didn't Know teaches you how the whole product thinks.
