Kindle highlights are some of the best raw material for flashcards, and some of the most neglected. They sit in a file or on a web page, they lose their context, and nobody opens them again. This guide shows how to get them into a spaced-repetition app and turn them into cards worth reviewing. One thing first, plainly: Cirello does not sync with Kindle or any other reading service. What it supports today is pasting a list of front::back pairs, and cards that point at a book or website you review from. Everything below works within that.
Key takeaways
- Cirello has no direct Kindle sync or import. The route in is copy, tidy and paste.
- Paste a list of front::back pairs and the whole set becomes cards in one pass, with duplicate detection.
- A raw highlight is not a good card. Turn it into a question with a short answer first.
- For passages you want to keep in context, a source-linked card points at the book and page instead of retyping the text.
- An AI assistant connected through Cirello's MCP server can draft cards from highlights you give it; you approve what stays.
Where do your Kindle highlights live?
A Kindle device stores highlights and notes in a plain-text file named My Clippings.txt in its documents folder, readable when you connect the device to a computer. The Kindle phone app does not produce that file. Amazon also lists your highlights for books you bought on its website, and you can select and copy text from there. Which of these you have depends on how you read, and the steps change, so check Amazon's current help pages for where yours are.
Third-party tools can parse a clippings file into other formats. Cirello does not integrate with them, so treat any such tool as a way to get clean text that you then paste in.
How do you turn a highlight into a flashcard?
A highlight is an answer without a question. Pasted as it is, it makes a card that tests whether you recognise a sentence. The fix takes seconds per highlight:
- Ask what you want to be able to say later. A definition, a date, a rule, a reason.
- Write that as a short question for the front.
- Keep the answer small. One idea, in your own words where you can.
For example, a highlighted sentence about the spacing effect becomes What does the spacing effect say about practice?::Spreading reviews over time is better for long-term memory than massing them together. The principle behind this is in how to write good flashcards.
How do you import them into Cirello?
- Copy the highlights you want from your clippings file or Amazon's page into any text editor.
- Rewrite each as one line in the form
front::back. - Paste the whole list into Cirello's bulk import. Each line becomes a card, and duplicate detection stops a re-paste from doubling your deck.
If you add more highlights later, paste the updated list again. Bulk-importing flashcards covers the format and the duplicate behaviour in more detail.
Can an AI assistant do the rewriting?
Yes, with the right setup. Cirello runs a remote MCP server, so an assistant such as Claude can create cards in your library when you ask. You paste the highlights into the chat, ask for small question-and-answer cards, and the assistant adds them to a deck, up to 50 cards per request, with only the permissions you approved. Skim what it made and delete or edit anything vague, because what is worth remembering is still your call. The walkthrough is on the Claude flashcards page.
When should you keep the book in the loop?
Some passages lose their meaning when extracted. For those, a source-linked card prompts from the book and a short instruction such as "page 118", so you review from the real page and keep the surrounding argument. That is the idea behind turning book highlights into flashcards and the remember book highlights page. A good split is small Q-and-A cards for crisp facts, and source-linked cards for passages that need their context.
How many highlights should become cards?
Fewer than you think. If you highlighted forty passages, a handful of them are probably worth keeping in rotation. Cards you will not want to see in six months only add to your queue; how many flashcards per day explains why. Cirello's default is 5 new cards a day, which suits a slow, steady intake from a book you are reading.
What Cirello does not do yet
There is no Kindle, Readwise or Apple Books sync, no clippings-file upload and no automatic card generation inside the app. Import is paste only, and cloze deletion cards are not built yet. What Cirello can and can't do today keeps that list current.
Written by the Cirello team; see about Cirello and how we write for our editorial approach. Questions or corrections? Contact us at [email protected] or through the support page.