Synapse

A command-line tool to track concepts, topics, and learning progress. Built from zero, growing alongside the developer who made it.

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What is Synapse?

Synapse creates connections between concepts. It lets you log what you're studying, how well you understand it, and where you stand, all from the terminal, all saved locally in a CSV file.

The idea: the tool grows with you. As your skills improve, so does Synapse.

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Features

• Add learning entries with category, topic, level, and status
• Auto-generated IDs (no manual input required)
• View a full report of all tracked concepts
• Search across all fields with a keyword
• Update any field of an existing entry
• Delete entries by ID
• Error handling for missing IDs on update and delete
• Data persists across sessions via a local CSV file

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Fields

Field	Description
id	Auto-generated unique identifier
categoria	Area of study (e.g. python, machine learning)
argomento	Specific topic (e.g. functions, regression)
livello	Difficulty level (e.g. base, intermedio)
stato	Current status (e.g. completato, in corso)
note	Free notes (e.g. course name, week)

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Usage

python Synapse_v2_1.py

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
            SYNAPSE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1) Aggiungi valore
2) Leggi report
3) Modifica valore
4) Cancella valore
5) Exit

When viewing the report, you can either show all entries or search by keyword, the search scans all fields simultaneously.

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Example Entry

ID: 1 | Categoria: python | Argomento: funzioni | Livello: base | Stato: completato | Note: cs50p week2

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Architecture

Each record is modeled as a SynapseEntry object rather than a raw dictionary. The class is the single authoritative definition of an entry's structure, and the rest of the program builds, reads, and writes those objects.

• __init__ sets the six attributes for a new entry
• @property exposes id as read-only, backed by _id and always stored as an int
• @classmethod from_dict() is an alternative constructor that builds an instance from a CSV row
• to_dict() serializes an instance back into a dictionary for csv.DictWriter
• __str__ defines how an entry is printed, so print(entry) replaces the old display function

The data flow across the program is: CSV row -> dict -> SynapseEntry -> dict -> CSV row. Dynamic field access inside loops is handled with getattr and setattr, keeping the read and write paths symmetrical.

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Tech Stack

• Python 3.12+
• csv, os, sys modules (standard library)
• Object-oriented design, no external dependencies

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Project Context

Synapse was built during CS50P - Harvard's Introduction to Programming with Python - as part of a self-directed path from zero background toward AI development.

The project lives even in cs50p-python, a public repo documenting the full learning journey.

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Changelog

v2.1

• Refactored from a procedural design to an object-oriented one
• Introduced the SynapseEntry class to model each record as an object
• Added @property for a read-only id, @classmethod from_dict() as an alternative constructor, to_dict() for serialization, and __str__ for display
• Replaced the standalone print_row() function with the __str__ method
• Functions now operate on SynapseEntry instances, with getattr/setattr for dynamic field access

v1.1

• Auto-generated IDs via auto_id(), uses max(existing_ids) + 1, handles deletions correctly
• Keyword search across all fields in report view
• Error handling in update_value() and delete_value() for missing IDs
• Extracted print_row() as a reusable function
• General code stability improvements

v1.0

• Initial release: add, view, update, delete entries

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Roadmap

• Filter report by category or status
• Progress statistics
• Export to Markdown or HTML
• JSON backend
• UUID-based IDs

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Author

Built by Sergio, transitioning into AI development, one project at a time.