Andrej Karpathy — Intro to LLMsY Combinator — How to get startup ideas
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Make a study guide
Turn a YouTube lecture into a study guide
Paste a lecture. Ancher reorders it for retention instead of for delivery, and writes self-checks you can actually answer.
No link handy? Try one:
Free to try, no card. Your YouTube video opens in Ancher.
Caption track with timingsKey frames from the videoDescription and linked sources
Kept in parts
Every one of these stays separately addressable instead of collapsing into one block of text.
Core conceptsDefinitionsWorked examplesSelf-check questions
Study guide
Material reorganized for retention: concepts, definitions, examples, self-checks.
A lecture is sequenced for a speaker with an hour to fill, which is close to the worst possible order for revising from. Ancher re-sorts the material by dependency, lifts definitions from where each term is introduced, recovers worked examples from the frames they were drawn on, and generates self-check questions whose answers point back to a specific second in the video.
The honest version
The board work is the lecture, and captions cannot see it
In any quantitative lecture the substance is written, not spoken — the derivation on the slide, the worked example on the whiteboard, the notation the speaker points at while saying "this term here". A caption-only tool receives "this term here" and nothing else, which is why study guides generated that way are confident about the narrative and empty about the mathematics.
One second of one video, at 38:12, read two ways.Illustrative. The figure is invented; the gap it falls into is not.
...and if you substitute that back in, you get which is the result we will use for the rest of the course.
Written on the board — not readThe specific never reaches the draft
Study guide
Written on the board
σ² = Σ(x−μ)²/n
from 38:12
Lands in the draft, with its timecode
- Frames are sampled through the lecture, so a derivation written on screen is recoverable instead of lost.
- Definitions come from first mention rather than from the recap, where they have already been compressed past usefulness.
- Every self-check answer cites a timecode, so a study partner with the same video can verify it.
What comes out
Study guide, section by section
Material reorganized for retention: concepts, definitions, examples, self-checks.
Core concepts
Concepts ordered by what depends on what, which is rarely the order a lecturer presents them in.
Definitions
Each term as first defined, with its timecode, so an ambiguous later use can be resolved against the original.
Worked examples
Worked examples reconstructed from the frames they were written on, step by step rather than summarised.
Self-check questions
Questions generated against timecoded claims, so every answer is checkable in the video rather than invented.
Further reading
The lecturer's own cited readings, which beat a generic reading list because they match what will be assumed next week.
Lecture-to-study-guide prompt
The link on its own gets a summary. This is the instruction that produces the 5 sections above, in that order, with the rules that keep them honest. Paste it with your YouTube video — in Ancher, or in whatever assistant you already use.
Convert this lecture into a study guide. (1) Extract concepts and order them by dependency, not by presentation order. (2) Give each term's definition from where it is first introduced, with timecode. (3) Reproduce every worked example shown on screen, step by step, from the frames rather than the narration. (4) Write eight self-check questions; every answer must cite a timecode. (5) List the lecturer's cited readings. Flag any formula you could not read cleanly instead of guessing at it.
The detail, if you want it
How each part of a YouTube video becomes a section
| From the YouTube video | Into | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Key frames from the video | Worked examples | Board work and slides exist only as pixels; frame sampling is the sole route by which a derivation reaches the guide at all. |
| Caption track with timings | Definitions | The first utterance of a term is where the full definition lives, and caption timings are what make that moment findable. |
| Caption track with timings | Self-check questions | Questions are written against claims that carry a timecode, which is what stops a self-check testing the summary's phrasing instead of the material. |
| Title, channel, duration, date | Core concepts | Duration and chaptering give a rough map of how much weight the lecturer gave each concept, which informs the ordering. |
| Description and linked sources | Further reading | Description links become the reading list, ranked by how often the lecturer refers back to them. |
Everything Ancher keeps from a YouTube video
Caption track with timings
Published and auto-generated captions both come through, and every line keeps the second it was spoken.
Key frames from the video
Frames are sampled and scored, so a number shown on a slide survives even though it was never said out loud.
Description and linked sources
The creator's own cited links come along, so a claim can be traced past the video.
Likes and comment counts
Reception is a weak signal about correctness and a strong one about which claims got attention.
Title, channel, duration, date
Basic provenance, kept so the finished work can attribute the video properly.
The four steps
- Add the YouTube video. Paste a YouTube URL. Ancher pulls the caption track with its timings, samples key frames from the video itself, and keeps the description links and engagement counts on the same source.
- Nothing gets flattened. Caption track with timings, key frames from the video, description and linked sources, likes and comment counts, title, channel, duration, date stay separately addressable instead of collapsing into one block of text.
- Ask for a study guide. Ancher fills core concepts, definitions, worked examples, self-check questions, further reading using the mapping above, not a generic summary pass.
- Check it before you use it. Every specific keeps a link back to where it came from in the YouTube video, so a claim can be verified without reopening the source.
Where this goes wrong
- If the concept list comes out in the same order as the lecture, the reorganisation did not happen and you have a transcript with headings.
- Notation is where captions and frame reading are both weakest. Verify every formula against the frame before you revise from it — a wrong symbol is worse than a gap.
- One lecture is rarely a unit of study. A guide built per lecture and never linked to the rest of the course will define the same term three times and connect nothing.
Questions people ask
Does it work for a whole course?
Better than for one lecture. Add every lecture to one collection and a term introduced in week two is linked to its use in week seven, instead of being redefined from scratch each time. That cross-linking is most of the value.
Will the formulas be right?
They come from frame reading rather than the caption track, which is far more reliable, but notation is the single most error-prone thing in any extraction pipeline. Treat every formula as needing one visual check before you trust it.
Can I turn the self-checks into flashcards?
The self-check section is written as question-and-answer pairs with timecodes for exactly that reason. Export them into whatever spaced-repetition tool you use; the timecode travels with the card so a wrong answer is one click from the explanation.
Bring your own YouTube videos
Everything you save lives in one workspace, so the study guide is built from your sources — not from a model's memory of the internet.
Open Ancher →Not a YouTube video? The same study guide also comes from PDF, recording, web page.