Spaced Practice Schedule Builder Agent Skill

Design a spaced retrieval schedule for any topic list and timeline.

Context cost
4.3k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 17.4 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Design a spaced retrieval schedule for any topic list and timeline. Use when planning units, term sequences, or revision programmes.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

distributed-practicedocumentationforgetting-curvememoryplanningspacing

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md17.4 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: spaced-practice-scheduler disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "memory-learning-science/spaced-practice-scheduler" skill_name: "Spaced Practice Schedule Builder" domain: "memory-learning-science" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) — The forgetting curve: exponential decay of memory without review" - "Cepeda et al. (2006) — Meta-analysis of 254 studies on distributed practice: optimal spacing depends on retention interval" - "Kornell & Bjork (2008) — Spacing and interleaving effects on learning" - "Carpenter et al. (2012) — Using spacing to enhance diverse forms of learning" - "Dunlosky et al. (2013) — Distributed practice rated high-utility learning strategy" input_schema: required: - field: "topics" type: "array" - field: "timeline" type: "string" - field: "lessons_per_week" type: "integer" optional: - field: "assessment_date" type: "string" - field: "topic_difficulty" type: "array" - field: "curriculum_sequence" type: "array" - field: "student_profiles" type: "array" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "schedule" type: "array" - field: "spacing_rationale" type: "string" - field: "review_activity_suggestions" type: "array" - field: "teacher_guidance" type: "string" chains_well_with: - "retrieval-practice-generator" - "interleaving-unit-planner" - "formative-assessment-technique-selector" - "lesson-opening-designer" teacher_time: "5 minutes" tags: ["spacing", "memory", "planning", "forgetting-curve", "distributed-practice"] ---
70# Spaced Practice Schedule Builder
71
72## What This Skill Does
73
74Takes a list of topics and a teaching timeline and generates an optimised review schedule that spaces retrieval opportunities at expanding intervals to combat the forgetting curve. The output is a week-by-week plan showing when to introduce new content and when to revisit previous topics, with specific activity suggestions for each review slot. AI is specifically valuable here because calculating optimal spacing intervals across multiple topics while respecting prerequisite dependencies and timetable constraints is genuinely complex — most teachers default to blocked practice (finish topic A, move to topic B, never return) because the cognitive load of planning spaced schedules manually is too high.
75
76## Evidence Foundation
77
78Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) first demonstrated that memory follows an exponential decay curve — without review, approximately 70% of new learning is lost within 24 hours. Cepeda et al. (2006) conducted a meta-analysis of 254 studies and established that the optimal gap between study sessions depends on the desired retention interval: roughly 10–20% of the retention interval is optimal (e.g., if you need students to remember something for 30 days, space reviews approximately 3–6 days apart). Carpenter et al. (2012) extended these findings to diverse classroom learning contexts, showing that spaced practice benefits declarative knowledge, procedural skills, and problem-solving. Kornell & Bjork (2008) demonstrated that spacing feels less effective to learners — students rate massed practice as more effective even when spaced practice produces better retention. This means teachers should expect students to initially prefer (and request) the less effective approach. Dunlosky et al. (2013) rated distributed practice as one of only two "high utility" strategies in their comprehensive review.
79
80## Input Schema
81
82The teacher must provide:
83- **Topics:** List of topics to space. *e.g. ["Cell structure", "Cell transport", "Cell division", "Enzymes", "Biological molecules"]*
84- **Timeline:** The available teaching period. *e.g. "8-week term, starting 3 February"*
85- **Lessons per week:** How many lessons per week. *e.g. 3*
86
87Optional (injected by context engine if available):
88- **Assessment date:** When the summative assessment falls — this anchors the final review cycle
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,554 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈710
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
3,640
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.2%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 22% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

4.3k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 17.4 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md17.4 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Spaced Practice Schedule Builder · 4.3k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/spaced-practice-schedule-builder" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder ] || { mv .claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/spaced-practice-schedule-builder" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/spaced-practice-schedule-builder

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/spaced-practice-schedule-builder" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/spaced-practice-schedule-builder" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/spaced-practice-schedule-builder/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where. It appears as spaced-practice-scheduler in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, spaced-practice-schedule-builder.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/spaced-practice-schedule-builder

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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