Decks and nesting

Decks define practical study scopes. A deck can contain subdecks, producing a tree that keeps one collection organized without forcing every study session to include everything.

Create a nested name

Repeto uses a double colon between levels, matching the hierarchy encoded by Anki packages:

Medicine
Medicine::Anatomy
Medicine::Anatomy::Neuroanatomy

The Decks page displays these as nested rows and uses disclosure controls for branches. Names that merely share a prefix are not treated as relatives: French is not the parent of French Literature; only French::Literature is nested.

Study scope

Opening Study on Medicine::Anatomy includes eligible cards directly in Anatomy and in its descendants, such as Neuroanatomy. Opening Study on Neuroanatomy includes only that subtree. Cards remain assigned to their concrete home deck.

The deck list reports subtree totals for parent rows. The Today page and collection summaries use hierarchy roots to avoid adding a child total to a parent total that already contains it.

Settings in a hierarchy

Each deck receives a private scheduling copy sourced from a named preset. A card fetched through a parent session still uses the effective copy of its own home deck.

On a parent deck’s settings page, Apply to subdecks copies the chosen scheduling configuration to the concrete descendants. This is a bulk replacement, so inspect local differences before applying it.

Today-only limits currently apply to the selected deck’s session scope. Full enforcement of every intermediate child limit and the optional “limits start from top” behavior remain scheduler parity work.

Naming guidance

Use shallow, meaningful branches. A useful structure usually describes subject, source, or level:

Spanish::Grammar::Past tense
Biology::Course 101::Cell biology

Avoid using hierarchy to encode every tag. Tags are better for attributes that cross decks, such as exam-2, needs-image, or source-book.

Repeto does not yet enforce a final maximum depth. The owner decision between five and ten levels is recorded in the internal audit, and the product should reject pathological depth before public release. Until then, keep the tree within five levels so it remains usable on smaller screens.

Current gaps

Typing :: and imported hierarchy are supported. Drag-and-drop reparenting, a dedicated parent picker during deck creation, natural numeric sorting, and the complete empty Default-deck lifecycle are still planned. See Anki parity roadmap for the consolidated status.