Frequently asked questions

Tech courses that work like narrated books. Every sentence is narrated, the illustrations are interactive, and each lesson ends with a quick quiz. One subscription unlocks all of them.

Anyone comfortable reading a little code and the basics of how software runs — your first serious stack, a switch into a new field, or closing a specific gap. The goal is to get you genuinely fluent in the why, not just memorizing steps.

Each course shows an estimate — for example ≈8.5 hours — on its cover and on the catalog card. That's the whole course: the narration plus the time to answer a quiz on every topic and work through the flashcard deck, not just the length of the audio.

Plenty already, with new ones added every month. Rather than list them here, just browse the catalog to see everything that's available right now.

Yes — a good chunk of every course is free for everyone: the introduction, the entire first chapter, every chapter's overview, and the first lesson of chapters 2 and 3. On top of that, one full beginner course is unlocked free for signed-in members every month, and it rotates — look for the banner on the home page and the “Free in <month>” badge on its card. Everything else is part of the subscription.

Two ways. Everyone can search the catalog and sort it by most popular, newest, or A–Z. And if you sign in and fill out your Learning profile in Settings — your experience level and the topics you care about — your catalog gains a Recommended view that leads with the courses that fit you best.

Yes. Read, listen, or both. The player lets you change the playback speed and add a pause between sentences, so you can find a rhythm that works for you — slow it down to absorb, speed it up to review.

Plenty. Right inside a lesson, the audio bar lets you change speed on the fly, set a pause between sentences, jump to the previous or next sentence, toggle the sentence highlight and auto-scroll, and collapse the bar when you just want to read. In Settings you can set the defaults those start from for every new lesson, switch between light and dark, and size the reading text up or down.

Every course is narrated by two professional-grade voices, one female and one male, and so is every flashcard deck. Set your default under Audio playback defaults in account settings, or switch at any point straight from the player — the new voice picks up on the sentence you're on, and your choice follows you from course to course.

Every course ends with a flashcard trainer built from its key terms — the last item in the course sidebar. Flip a card to check yourself, then answer honestly: “I know this” or “Don't know yet”. Scheduling is handled by FSRS, the spaced-repetition algorithm behind modern Anki, so each card returns just before you'd forget it — known cards drift out to weeks and months, missed ones come back tomorrow. Cards are read aloud in the course's narration voice, and the sidebar shows two thin bars: green for terms you currently remember, amber for ones due for review. Details in the guide.

Three ways we track progress for signed-in members. Learned is what you've read or heard. Quizzes is what you've proven by passing each lesson's quiz. Flashcards is how much of the course's vocabulary you've mastered in the spaced-repetition trainer. You always see all three — your dashboard adds progress bars, an activity heatmap, a streak, and an achievement medal for each course you fully master. Quiz progress syncs across your devices.

Set a daily goal in Settings → Learning profile. It has two halves: lessons (quizzes) passed — 1 to 10 a day, or whole chapters if you prefer — and flashcards answered, 10 a day by default. A day counts toward your streak only when you've done both, because reading alone is how you finish a course and remember none of it. Hit the goal and a 🔥 appears next to your name in the top bar. Passing quizzes is what counts, so the streak reflects what you've actually proven — not just pages opened.

Cover for a day you miss, so a run you've kept for weeks doesn't die over one impossible day. The snowflake next to the flame on your dashboard shows how many you have, and there's nothing to press: miss a day and one is spent for you automatically. Each freeze costs a little more than the last — the first comes after 10 days of studying, the second 11 days later, the third 12 days after that (three at 33 days, ten at 145). It keeps the run going but doesn't add to the number, because your streak counts the days you actually studied. Away for a week? You'll spend one freeze per day missed, and if they run out the streak ends on the first day nothing covers. Freezes belong to your current run, so if it breaks, the count starts again.

Yes. At the bottom of the course contents, under Flashcards, there's Reset progress. It clears the ticks, your quiz results and your place in the course — and asks first, with a checkbox for whether your flashcards should start over as well. What it doesn't touch: your day streak, your activity graph and your streak freezes (you really did study on those days), and your achievements — a course you've finished stays finished, so the medal and the certificate are yours for good. One course at a time, and it never affects the others.

Yes. IT Playbook runs in any modern browser — phone, tablet, or desktop — with no app to install. Sign in and your progress, settings, and place in each course follow you across all of them.

Yes, and we take it seriously — outdated info is the whole problem with most tech tutorials. Every course is checked against the official documentation and updated whenever the tools change. Each course card shows when it was last reviewed, and new courses are added every month.

Yes. Finish a course — every quiz passed and every flashcard known — and a medal appears under Achievements on your dashboard — and when you're one half away, the course card on your dashboard tells you exactly what's left. Click the medal to open your certificate of completion, showing your name, the course, its length and the date.

It has its own web address, so you can share the link with an employer or on LinkedIn and they can open it without an account. There's a Copy link button, and Print / save as PDF if you'd rather send a file. One per course, and it doesn't expire.

We also email you the link the first time a certificate is issued, so it's in your inbox whether or not you kept the tab open.

The display name from your profile, so set it the way you want to be credited: Settings → Profile → Display name. Change it later and the certificate updates — open it again from the medal, and the link stays the same.

No. Completion is every quiz passed and every flashcard known. Read the lessons or listen to them, whichever suits you — the quizzes are what prove you worked through the material, and they're the same either way.

Yes — we use a range of AI agents, each handling a different part of the work. But they're all in a supporting role: every piece of information is carefully checked and re-checked, by both AI agents and experienced engineers, before it goes live.

One membership covers every course: $16/month or $120/year. Both plans are launch-priced at 50% off your first year — $8/month or $60/year — applied automatically at checkout, no code to enter. Cancel any time; you keep access to the end of the period you have paid for.

Yes. You can cancel — or update your plan and payment method — anytime from your account. You keep access through the end of the current period.

Please send it! Signed-in members can reach us through Support: feedback, corrections, or a course you'd like to see. We read all of it, and corrections often ship in the next monthly update.