Typing each card by hand
Web reading is where most usable vocabulary actually lives. Manually copying the word, the sentence, and the source URL into a new note breaks reading flow and stops happening after a week.
For Anki users
A frictionless capture pipeline from the web into Anki.
Select a word while reading. Press Ctrl + Space (Control + Space on Mac). Save it with the sentence it came from. Group what you’ve saved into a list. Export an .apkg that imports straight into Anki with the word on the front, the sentence as context, the translation on the back, and your tags carried over. No account. No cloud. No AnkiConnect required.
What we built it for
Four friction points that kill web-to-Anki capture in practice.
Krendo isn’t a replacement for Anki — it’s a capture layer that feeds Anki cleanly. The product decisions below are reactions to the specific things that break the read-to-card flow today.
Cards without sentence context
A word stripped of the sentence it came from is a lottery ticket — you might recall the meaning, you might not, and the next time you see it in real text you won't recognize it as the same word.
Bulk capture without targeting
Tools that export every translation you ever made flood your daily review with words you don't actually want to learn. You need to capture a lot but only export some.
Plugin-dependent workflows
AnkiConnect-based capture only works when Anki desktop is running with the right add-on installed. Useful when it does work — but a hard prerequisite for many people, especially on mobile-first study.
How a card gets to Anki
Seven small steps, zero typing.
- 1
Read an article in your target language.
Anything renders normally. Krendo doesn't change page layout.
- 2
Select an unfamiliar word, press Ctrl + Space (Control + Space on Mac).
A small overlay opens inline next to the selection with the translation, dictionary entry, and a Save button. Saving is one click; everything else is optional.
- 3
Hit Save.
The word lands in your local library with the sentence it came from, the page title, and a link back to the article. If you've already saved the word from a different article, the new sentence is appended as another context — not a duplicate row.
- 4
Optionally tag and note.
Tags are your buckets ("business", "news", "tech docs"). Notes are personal glosses ("false friend of X", "use only in formal register"). Both flow through to the exported Anki card.
- 5
Open the web companion.
Your saved library lives at krendo.app/app. Filter by tag, status, source domain, or date. Save a filter as a Word List if you want to keep returning to the same slice.
- 6
Export to .apkg.
The Export button respects whatever you've filtered to. A 50-card focused deck on 'business words I saved last month' is one click — not the entire library.
- 7
In Anki: File → Import → pick the .apkg.
A new Krendo deck appears. The word and its sentence are on the front; the translation, dictionary entry, source URL, and your note are on the back. Tags carry over, plus krendo, sl:xx, tl:yy so you can filter Krendo cards within Anki.
Why .apkg and not AnkiConnect
.apkg first because it works for everyone with Anki.
AnkiConnect is great when it works — it requires the desktop app running with the add-on installed during browsing. Many serious Anki users review primarily on mobile, or open the desktop app only during dedicated study sessions, or haven’t installed the add-on. .apkg works on all of them, on any platform that accepts the standard format. AnkiConnect is on the roadmap as an opt-in second mode for users who want the zero-export-step workflow.
Honest limits, version 1
Two things v1 of the export doesn’t do.
- Embedded audio is not in the .apkg.The inline overlay and the in-browser review play TTS; the exported cards don’t carry audio files. The standard Anki addons AwesomeTTS and HyperTTS speak cards on-demand with your installed voices, and the Krendo cards work with them unchanged. Embedded audio is on the roadmap.
- Re-export is manual.Edit a note in Krendo after you’ve already imported the card to Anki, and you’ll need to re-export and re-import to push the edit. Stable GUIDs mean Anki updates the existing card in-place — no duplicate — but the trigger is manual.
Start capturing.
Free. Local-first. Two minutes to install. The first card you save tonight goes into Anki tomorrow morning.