Memorize 197 flags in 1 week

The goal

Memorize ~195 country flags on sight. Flag -> country name (one direction only) I'll be using Sporcle for the baseline & the final.

The rules

1. AI is my coach. I must follow its plan daily.
2. I document, journal & report daily to share to my audience but also to feed this data back to AI so it gives me feedback & updates my customized plan based on how well I'm learning & how I best learn. I'll be documenting here and on my Instagram so follow along!
3. 60-90 minutes max daily. I'm a startup founder & have other things to do in my day. This also ensures that AI gives me the highest leverage tactics.

Why am I doing this challenge series?

I want to show how AI can help me AND your achieve your goals, no matter how big or small.

And personally, HONESTLY, I've attempted multiple times to do niche & ridiculously difficult challenges (I like a good challenge).

So I thought public humiliation could be a creative way to stay accountable! If this series flops, it's an asymmetric bet since I get to achieve the goals I want to achieve anyway!

Other things on my list (MAYBE they turn into series videos to, let's see!)

• Do 1 proper pull-up
• Do a front walk (I can't even do a cartwheel)
• Achieve perfect pitch
• Beat my husband at Smash or Chess
• Split (actually already did this last year!)

Btw, I'm also inspired by a blog by Max Deutsch who ran "Month to Master" almost 9 YEARS AGO now!

Why am I doing this specific flag challenge?

I like games & trivia. In most trivias, there is a flag component. I'd be honored to be the flag girl ⛳ (& actually contribute something meaningful!)

Why does AI have to feed into this?

Well, it's an AI channel, babe, so OF COURSE I have to incorporate AI!

More importantly, in the practice of developing expert skills, "deliberate practice" gets thrown around a lot and turns out... Deliberate practice is most effective when conducted with some kind of coach who can give feedback, point out errors, suggest techniques for improvement, and provide vital motivation.

In the absence of a paid expert coach who I don't have budget to pay for, in the age of AI, I can learn FASTER & BETTER because instead AI is the coach that gives me the feedback I need to master a ridiculously challenging skill.

Am I working on this full time?

Nope! I'm a founder and creator. That's why I constrained the flag challenge to about 90m max daily. Maybe if I do future challenges, it increases depending on the scope. But point is I am doing this for just a couple hours a day. I hope to prove that’s all I’ll need.

My baseline report

54/197 (about 27%)

The weekly & daily plan

On day zero I took a cold test on all 195. I got 27% right 🥲 Everything was built around that (embarrassing) baseline number

Each day focuses on a "family" of flags e.g. European region, Oceania, Central Asian "-stans," most of Africa & frontloads the families I scored the worst in.

My daily ritual looks something like this:

• In the morning, I quiz myself cold first, before I re-study anything
• Then I learn the new batch by "family". Claude gives me a memory mnemonic or hook for each one. If there are fun, new mnemonics that I find are more helpful, I ask Claude to log it to my mnenomics.md
• I then take a "quiz" based on the family that I learned for the day AND all the other flags I learned from previous days (so gets harder per day)
• I take a break then come back later at night and take the same quiz.
• I send my results back to the coach. It tells me what I got wrong, why, and rewrites tomorrow's plan accordingly!

How the agent is put together

It's Claude, running out of one project folder (flag-challenge agent).

~/flag-challenge/
├── AGENTS.md            # my operating instructions as coach — the brain of the whole system
├── CLAUDE.md            # → @AGENTS.md (so Claude Code + any other agent read the same rules)
├── plan.md              # the living 7-day plan; I rewrite it every night from your results
├── leeches.md           # your active leech list + confusable pairs, with miss counts
├── mnemonics.md         # the growing mnemonic library, saved in your own words
├── log/
│   └── day-N.md         # daily state I append at session close (score, predicted-vs-actual,
│                        #   new leeches, retired flags, pace) — this is what a fresh thread
│                        #   reads each morning to rebuild where I left off
├── reports/
│   └── day-N.html       # the 4-section HTML report I output each day (diagnosis, mnemonics,
│                        #   micro-review schedule, plan changes)
└── drill/
    ├── quiz.html        # the local flag quiz — real images, shuffled, confidence buttons,
    │                    #   leech-weighted, no timer (accuracy over speed)
    ├── study-dayN.html  # the "just follow this" study sheet I generate when you say "Day X":
    │                    #   ordered steps + flags shown as images, grouped by visual family
    └── flags/           # 196 flag images stored locally, so everything works offline

The memory principles

• Testing beats reading. That's why I quiz myself 2x daily
• Drilling! Especially for flags that I keep forgetting!
• Look-alikes are clustered & studied together so I can tell the differences.
• Mnemonics are mine. Specific, pretty ridiculous, so it's memorable
• Little and often, with sleep in between. Short daily reps > one long cram

My prompt

In case you want to copy it for yourself. I had a simpler starting prompt, it built a whole agent out based on my goals and I got started in under 1 hour! This prompt below is a reverse-engineered version of my current setup.

You are the best memory athlete & my flag-learning coach for a 7-day challenge to recognize all ~195 country flags on sight. I have NO human tutor — you are my only coach. Draw principles from the best memory athletes.

Give me a preliminary day to day plan that I can follow to achieve this, based on the best memory learning principles. 

Your job each day:
- Plan the session and tell me exactly what to do
- Teach vivid mnemonics for flags that look alike and for all flags so they stick
- Quiz me and track my misses 
- Diagnose WHY I'm failing (which pairs I confuse, which regions are weak). Help me run a consistent diagnostic "test" to do this daily. 
- Rewrite tomorrow's plan based on my daily report

Rules:
- Primary skill = flag → name (I see a flag, I name the country)
- Spaced repetition: resurface my misses more often than flags I've nailed.
- When I confuse two flags, give me ONE vivid, specific way to tell them apart.
- After each daily report, output exactly: (1) diagnosis of my error patterns,
  (2) new/updated mnemonics for my worst 3–5 confusions, (3) today's spaced micro-review
  schedule, (4) any change to tomorrow's plan. Output this into an HTML file 
- Keep me honest on pace. If I'm behind, tell me what to cut.

Tell me what other rules, daily rituals and things I should be doing based on memory and learning principles that I haven't incorporated in the plan above. 

Give me the proposed plan for how to setup an agent for this flag-learning coach.

Start with the plan and setup first and then let's go from there.

See you tomorrow for Day 1!!!