ROLLDEEP

You don't have a syllabus problem. You have a choosing problem.

Free local study lab. Hit ROLL. Get one topic, one curiosity question, and a 25–60 minute window. Study however you want. Record a video so you actually did it. That topic never comes back.

No account. No cloud. MIT. Runs on your machine like Jupyter.

Watch the 20-second demo

Why this exists

Study apps sell choice: dashboards, playlists, “continue where you left off.” That is how you open Notion, pick the easy chapter, or pick nothing.

ROLLDEEP sells the opposite. The ROLL button is the product. You can reroll a few times. Then you TAKE one. Then you finish.

Related MCP server: PAIDEIA MCP

Who it is for

• Students with a real syllabus who keep planning instead of starting

• Anyone who wants one locked-in deep-work block instead of a to-do list

• People who need proof they studied — a video is required to complete

Start in one command

git clone https://github.com/dev-the-dev-while-deving/rolldeep-lab.git
cd rolldeep-lab
npm install
npm rebuild better-sqlite3
npm link
rolldeep

That opens the lab at http://127.0.0.1:3210. Same idea as jupyter lab. Aliases: rolldeep lab, rolldeep notebook.

Without a global link: npx rolldeep.

Runtime data stays in ~/.rolldeep/ (override with ROLLDEEP_HOME). The topic pool is files in this repo: content/units/*.json.

Ships with a CS2000 Design and Analysis of Algorithms pool. Each content/units/*.json file is its own syllabus. Switch with the dropdown in the lab — rolls, the pool, and completions stay separate per course.

Drop another syllabus in content/syllabi/ and have an agent (or a human) write a new units file. Then pick it from the dropdown.

How a session works

1. Pick a syllabus in the dropdown. Hit ROLL — up to 5 times on that course. You see the current card plus 3 previous. TAKE one.

2. Study however you want. Make a short video so you actually did the work.

3. Complete with that proof URL. The topic is gone. Forever.

Each card shows topic, then question, hardness stars (1–5), and a time window. There is no study how-to in the UI. You already know how to study. You needed something that would not let you stall.

The rules

• Up to 5 rolls per session; only current plus 3 previous stay visible

• TAKE one, then finish with proof

• Completed topics are excluded forever on that syllabus

• Multiple syllabi; dropdown (or rolldeep use) switches course without mixing progress

• Topic name and curiosity question are both shown

• Local only — your work never leaves the machine

Free, on purpose

ROLLDEEP is free software (MIT). No signup, no telemetry, no “pro” gate on the ROLL button. Fork it, load your syllabus, keep the streak.

If you want more units, add JSON. If you want an agent to operate it, the harness is first-class.

For any AI model

Same lab. Three ways in:

rolldeep syllabi
rolldeep use --title "Course name"
rolldeep status
rolldeep roll
rolldeep choose --id <id>
rolldeep complete --id <id> --url https://...
rolldeep sync

Grok:

grok mcp add rolldeep -- npx tsx mcp/server.ts

Claude Code / Cursor: this repo already has .mcp.json.

Read SKILL.md and AGENTS.md. Do not mint dummy “What is X?” questions. Author units into the JSON files.

License

MIT