Import and Export (Anki, CSV)

Notes leave Read Frog as a CSV file and come in through an AI assistant. Export is a button on the notebase. Import has no button: you hand the file to ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant connected over MCP, and it writes the notes into a notebase for you. That works the same for an Anki deck, a Quizlet set, a spreadsheet or any word list you can save as text.

Export

Export CSV

Open the notebase from readfrog.app/home and, on the Notes tab, choose Export CSV. The file holds the notes the table is showing — if a search is active, only the notes it matches — one row per note and one column per field.

• The first row is the field names.
• A Select field is written as the option's text, and a Checkbox as true or false.
• The file is UTF-8 and marked as such, so Excel opens Chinese, Japanese and Korean text correctly.
• A value that starts with =, +, - or @ gets an apostrophe in front, so that a spreadsheet does not run it as a formula.

The file holds notes only. Cards, card templates and review history stay in Read Frog.

Open it in Anki

If you leave the first row in, Anki turns it into a note made of your field names, which you can delete — unless Existing notes was on Update and a note of that note type already had the first column's name as its first field. Then Anki overwrote that note instead of adding one, and deleting it would delete a note you had. If a value had an apostrophe added in front, remove it in Anki's browser.

Notes that are added start as new cards: their Read Frog schedule does not travel with them.

If you want a different file — tags in their own column, only the notes saved this month, the term and its example on one side — ask an assistant connected over MCP to read the notebase and write the file the way Anki should receive it. That needs notebases and notes read access.

Import

There is no import button. An assistant connected to your account reads your file, matches its columns to your fields and saves the notes, up to 50 in each call.

Before you start

• Connect an assistant. Follow Connect an assistant. To import into a new notebase, grant notebases and notes read and write. To import into a notebase you already have, notebases read is enough alongside notes read and write.
• Check your plan. Free holds 10 notes in total, which is enough to try the steps but not to bring a deck across. See How much you can import.

Get the file out of Anki

In Anki, choose File → Export, pick Notes in Plain Text (.txt) and the deck you want, untick Include HTML and media references so the fields come out as plain text, and export.

From another app, any list where each line is one entry will do: a CSV or TSV file, a Quizlet set copied out with its export option, a spreadsheet saved as CSV, another dictionary's word book. You do not need to tidy it first. The assistant works out the columns; if it guesses one wrong, tell it which is which.

Ask the assistant

Attach the file and say where the notes should go. Into a new notebase:

Here's my Anki deck exported as text. Create a notebase called "Spanish" with fields that match its columns, then import every note. Show me the fields you plan to create before you create anything.

create_notebase → get_notebase_schema → create_notes · notebases:write with notes:write

Into a notebase you already have:

Import this word list into my English notebase. Match the columns to the fields that are already there, and skip any word the notebase already has.

get_notebase_schema → list_notes → create_notes · notes:write with notebases:read

Asking for the plan first is worth the extra turn when the assistant creates fields: a field's type cannot be changed once it exists.

Each create_notes call saves its batch whole or not at all, so an import that stops partway never leaves half a batch behind. Ask the assistant to carry on from where it stopped.

Cards for the imported notes

Notes become cards through a card template. A notebase that already has templates turns every imported note into cards straight away. A new notebase gets a default template by itself when its fields fit one — a term and a definition, for example. Otherwise ask the assistant to build one, as in Generate a card template, or write it yourself in Card Templates.

What does not come across

• Review history. Imported notes become new cards. The notebase's daily limit introduces them gradually — 20 new cards a day by default — so a 2,000-note deck takes 100 days at that pace. Raise New cards per day in Study Settings to go faster.
• Images and audio. Fields hold text, numbers, checkboxes, dates and select options. Media in the Anki deck stays in Anki.
• Anki's card templates. The text export carries the fields, not the templates. Use the default template or have the assistant write one.
• Tags. Read Frog has no tags. If they matter to you, ask the assistant to put them in a Text or Select field.

How much you can import

Every tool the assistant runs counts as one call, reading the schema included, and one create_notes call saves up to 50 notes. The count starts over 24 hours after the first call.

Where to go next

• Connect an assistant — add the MCP server and choose its permissions
• Recipes — more things to ask an assistant to do with your notes
• Card Templates — the front and back of the imported notes' cards
• Study Settings — how many new cards a day