Katecheo pops up a flashcard every so often and will not let you back to your work until you answer it. Load it with whatever you are memorizing: vocabulary, catechism, exam questions, anything with a right answer.
κατηχέω · to teach by asking · a free macOS app
Every so often your screen locks with one question. Answer it right and you are back to work.
Each correct answer stretches the gap before the next question, from 10 minutes up to a full hour. A wrong one pulls it back in.
Put focused blocks on a calendar. When one starts, only the apps and sites you picked stay open.
Work and rest blocks tick by on screen. Pausing needs a reason, and skipping counts against you.
How it works
Switch on a curated set, or paste your own notes into the DeckBuilder and let any AI turn them into a deck. Katecheo checks the file before it takes it.
Tell it which week or chapter you are on. Most questions come from there, older material keeps coming back less often, and the words you miss come back sooner.
It waits until you are not typing, not on a call, and not watching something. Then it asks. One right answer and you are through.
Buffer time
Seven rungs from ten minutes to an hour. A clean first answer moves you up one. A miss moves you down one. Close the lid and walk away and it still knows when the next question is due.
Minutes between questions. The top rung sparkles.
Sessions
Plan a block of work and rest on the calendar. When it starts you get a five-minute warning, then only the apps and sites you allowed stay open. Miss a session and it counts against you in the weekly report, minute by minute, by what you meant to be doing.
No account, no tracking, no data collection. Nothing you study ever leaves your Mac. Requires macOS 15 or later.
No. It waits until you have stopped typing for a few seconds, and it holds off entirely while a video is playing, a call is running, or an app is full screen. Music does not count; keep it on.
Anything with a right answer. Two curated sets ship with it (New Testament Greek vocabulary and the Westminster Shorter Catechism). For your own material, the DeckBuilder writes a prompt you can hand to Claude, ChatGPT or any assistant along with your notes, and checks the file it gives back before importing.
Yes, by holding Escape for five seconds. It is logged, it shows up in your weekly report, and if you turn on penalty mode it costs you a rung. The point is friction, not a cage.
Katecheo is the English transliteration of κατηχέω, to teach by word of mouth, the root of "catechize." Say it however you like; the "ch" is a chi.
No. There is no account and no server. Everything lives in a local database on your Mac, with a JSON backup you control.