Orbit is an experimental platform designed to publish and engage with tasks repeatedly over time, initially focusing on the mnemonic medium. It aims to provide a more general form of spaced repetition, similar to Anki, as part of a cloud service. Orbit stores tasks, manages their schedules, and allows ingestion from various sources. It is primarily a research project focused on understanding the scope of such systems. The core technology involves a modular architecture built with TypeScript.
Orbit's modular design allows for cross-platform support (desktop, mobile, web). It supports various data store implementations, including on-disk file formats and IndexedDB for web browsers. The project features a comprehensive API with client implementations for Node, browser, and React Native environments. A notable aspect is its flexible licensing strategy, balancing permissive open-source licenses with a copyleft option for the client application and cloud service.
- Task Management: Enables ingestion, scheduling, and completion of tasks.
- Cross-Platform Support: Applications available for desktop, mobile, and web.
- Multiple Data Stores: Supports on-disk files and IndexedDB for data persistence.
- API & Clients: Provides a REST API and client implementations for various environments.
- Sync Functionality: Data synchronization across devices and potentially a central server.
- Web Component: Facilitates embedding Orbit functionality into external websites.
- Anki Import: Supports importing data from Anki .apkg files.
Orbit is in an early research phase with recent commits and ongoing development. While open-sourced, it's primarily driven by research goals and not focused on extensive community contributions at this time. Documentation is being developed, and the project has a growing list of contributors and supporters. Its reliability is evolving with continued development and testing.
Orbit benefits authors seeking a platform to integrate tasks with mnemonic techniques and provides a foundation for exploring spaced repetition systems. It addresses the need for a flexible and extensible platform for managing and reinforcing information. It offers an alternative to traditional task management tools and manual repetition methods, particularly for leveraging mnemonic principles.