# Times tables practice as a system of record

> TimesOwl remembers when 7 × 8 is due with ordinary, deterministic code. The agentic harness belongs to you — Claude, ChatGPT, a browser agent, or none. Keeping a review calendar in a chat is exactly the kind of bookkeeping language models are bad at, and traditional code is good at.

## Why the due date cannot live in the chat

### LLM context is a terrible scheduler.

Agents forget. They compress. They invent a review that feels about right. A spaced-repetition system of record stores a next-ask date on every fact and updates it from the typed answer and the clock. That is traditional code. It should stay traditional code.

### The agentic harness belongs to you.

TimesOwl is not a tutor-agent we run on your child’s facts. You bring the assistant you already use. We publish machine-readable surfaces so that harness can explain the product and send a family to practice. We do not replace the harness, and we do not ask it to keep the deck.

### Deterministic scheduling is the job.

A miss brings 7 × 8 back in seconds. A fast correct answer pushes it out. That calendar has to be the same tonight and next Thursday. Sampling tokens cannot be the source of truth for “is this fact due?”

## What stays in code, what your agent can do

### TimesOwl keeps (system of record)

- The next-ask date on every fact from 2 × 2 through 12 × 12.
- Grading from the typed answer and how long it took — kids never self-rate.
- Which facts are due in tonight’s five minutes.
- When to open new facts, so the pile does not dump.

### Your harness can (and should not schedule)

- Explain spaced repetition without inventing a shop or a per-question countdown.
- Send a family to the session. Then stop trying to remember the due list.
- Look up 7 × 8 if someone asks. Recalling it later is still TimesOwl’s job.
- Not reconstruct a review calendar in the model’s context window.

## Surfaces so your agent can stay a harness

### A map, not a dump of the HTML.

/llms.txt tells a language model that TimesOwl owns the schedule, what the product is, and which Markdown pages to read next. Each public page has a .md twin. Use those instead of scraping layout chrome, and instead of keeping cards in the prompt.

### An MCP server the harness can call.

POST JSON-RPC to /mcp for product facts — session length, deck size, grading thresholds, the real review ladder. There is no account on these tools. They do not return a child’s due list. That list is the system of record inside practice, not a payload to stuff into context.

### WebMCP on the live page (desktop, emerging).

Every TimesOwl page registers tools on document.modelContext so a desktop browser agent can open practice or a guide without guessing at buttons. That is actuation. It is not permission to become the scheduler. WebMCP is an emerging standard. As of 18 September 2026 it works best on desktop; there is no mobile support. That snapshot may be outdated.

## WebMCP support (may be outdated)

WebMCP is an emerging standard from the W3C Web Machine Learning Community Group, not a finished browser feature. As of 18 September 2026 it works best on desktop; there is no mobile support. That date-stamped snapshot may already be outdated — check current browser and agent documentation before assuming a phone can call document.modelContext. Remote MCP at /mcp, /llms.txt, and the .md page twins do not depend on WebMCP and work from any client.

## The due list stays in TimesOwl

Which facts are due, stars, and the child’s name are the system of record. Agent APIs describe the product so your harness can route a family here. They do not dump a review queue into a context window. That would throw away the thing deterministic code is good at.

## Machine-readable entry points

- [llms.txt](https://timesowl.com/llms.txt): Curated map of the site for language models.
- [llms-full.txt](https://timesowl.com/llms-full.txt): The same map plus every public page inlined.
- [MCP server](https://timesowl.com/mcp): Streamable HTTP JSON-RPC. Start with initialize, then tools/list.
- [MCP discovery](https://timesowl.com/.well-known/mcp.json): Well-known document for clients that look up the server URL.