Skimr: AI Research Assistant

Distill research with AI. Now features Smart Multiple-Choice Quizzes and Markdown Vault Export for Obsidian.

Free Chrome extension that turns any article or PDF into Cliff Notes, AI flashcards, and a 4-question recall quiz, in seconds. Built for students, researchers, and serious readers who want to read less and remember more. Skimr runs locally in your browser. No account, no API keys, no tracking. WHY ACTIVE RECALL? The biggest meta-analysis on study strategies found that highlighting and re-reading have near-zero effect on long-term retention. The methods that actually work — testing yourself and spaced practice — have always been hard because someone has to write the questions. Skimr removes that friction. WHAT SKIMR DOES: • AI Cliff Notes — get the core takeaways from any article, paper, or PDF in 5 seconds • Auto-generated flashcards — ready to study, no manual deck building • 4-question recall quiz — find your gaps before the exam does • Custom AI Q&A — ask anything about the page, grounded in the actual content • Vault — save summaries locally on your device • Markdown / PDF export — works with Anki, Obsidian, Notion, NotebookLM WHO USES SKIMR: • Undergraduate and graduate students processing course readings • PhD students and researchers running through dozens of papers a week • Pre-med and law students who need to retain dense material • ESL learners reading academic text in a second language • Knowledge workers and PKM users who want frictionless capture PRIVACY: Skimr runs locally on your device. No account creation. No data sent to ad networks. No training-data risk. Your reading stays yours. 100% free, forever. Built by Anu Tewari, a mechanical engineer (ex-Rivian, ex-Volkswagen) who got tired of nodding along to articles and forgetting them by the next week. Reach me at skimr.app or @SkimrApp on X. Skimr is an Anki alternative for active recall, an AI PDF summarizer, an AI study tool for college and graduate students, an AI flashcard generator, and a free Chrome extension for retrieval practice.