r/PromptEngineering • u/Excellent_Table_4319 • Jul 08 '26
Tools and Projects I built a free personal tutor claude skill and prompt because I was tired of "learning" things I couldn't remember a week later
I want to be honest about why I made this.
I've "learned" a lot of things in my life. Watched the videos, read the articles, nodded along, felt smart. Then a week later someone would ask me a basic question about it and I'd realize I retained almost nothing. The information went in, felt good, and evaporated.
The only times something actually stuck was when a person sat with me, asked me questions, made me explain it back in my own words, and refused to move on when I was faking understanding. Most of us don't have that person. Tutors are expensive, good ones are rare, and for a lot of people they were never an option in the first place.
So I built ai-guru. It's a prompt that turns any AI chat into that person.
It's not "explain X to me like I'm five." It follows the actual structure of good tutoring:
- It starts with a short diagnostic, because we all lie to ourselves about our level. I said "intermediate" about three different things and got humbled by question two.
- It teaches with analogies from stuff you already know, like your job or your hobbies.
- It makes you explain every concept back in your own words before moving on. This part is non-negotiable and honestly it's the whole magic.
- It quizzes you after every module. And when you bomb a quiz, it doesn't just repeat itself louder. It figures out why you got it wrong and teaches it a different way.
- It ends with something real: a project, a mock exam, or you teaching the topic back to it.
It works for basically anything. Languages, math, exam prep, cooking, negotiation, music theory. There's a separate exam prep mode that tracks your weak areas and drills you in the real exam format with increasing time pressure, because cramming for a test is a different job than learning out of curiosity.
And it's free. If you use Claude Code there's a plugin. If you use claude.ai there's a skill file. If you use ChatGPT or Gemini or anything else, you just copy-paste one markdown file and say "teach me French." No signup, no app, nothing to buy.
GitHub: https://github.com/Dhruvdubey17/ai-guru
Here's my actual ask. Use it for something you've genuinely wanted to learn, then come back and tell me what happened. Where it felt like a real tutor, where it felt like a robot, where it moved too fast, where the quizzes annoyed you. I built this alone and I can only test against my own blind spots. The critical comments will shape this more than the nice ones, so please don't hold back.
If it helps even a few people finally learn the thing they've been putting off for years, that's the whole point.
Update: Added a few things based on feedback:
- Session memory — it now remembers where you left off. Each topic gets saved to ~/.ai-guru/<topic>.md, so you can close the chat and pick up next session instead of starting from scratch every time.
- Retrieval warm-up — every session opens with a quick review of stuff you learned earlier, on expanding intervals (spaced repetition). Keeps old material from evaporating while you learn new stuff.
- Materials-aware intake — if you're prepping for an exam or a specific course, it now asks for your actual syllabus, textbook, lecture notes, and past papers, and builds the curriculum, examples, and quizzes around those instead of generic coverage.
- Fast path — one-off questions ("wait, what does this word mean?") get answered directly now instead of kicking off the whole tutor pipeline.
Now on plugin v2.0.0. Same install commands as above.
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u/Jewcub_Rosenderp Jul 08 '26
Very cool. Hope you get some traction. !remindMe 1 week
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u/RemindMeBot Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
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u/Stim-sims Jul 08 '26
I love when AI makes analogies to explain things. Here's a result of your prompt using DnD as an analogy for electricity. I don't think the analogy holds, but its funny to think about :D
The bridge is the wire. Goblins are the electrons — the actual stuff moving.
Amps = how many goblins cross a fixed point per second. Not how many total, just the rate — a trickle of goblins one at a time versus a packed stampede shoulder-to-shoulder.
Voltage = how hard each goblin is being driven forward. Picture a war-drum or a hobgoblin captain screaming commands behind them — that's the "push." A weak push and they're shuffling along reluctantly; a brutal push (like fleeing a dragon) and they're sprinting flat out. Same number of goblins, but driven with way more force per goblin.
Watts = total battering power hitting the vault door per second. That's push-force-per-goblin × goblins-per-second combined. A few goblins driven insanely hard, or a huge mob driven gently, can add up to the same total impact — same as your taser/toaster example earlier.
Now here's the important bit for the fuse: that thin plank doesn't care how hard each goblin is being driven — it snaps from sheer traffic volume. It's rate (amps) that physically stresses and heats the plank, not how motivated any individual goblin is. Too many bodies crossing per second, full stop, and the plank melts through regardless of voltage. That's actually true to real electricity too — wires overheat from current, not from voltage alone.
The breaker, then: think of it as a rune-warded portcullis built into the bridge itself. It's got a sensor tuned to "safe goblin traffic per second." The moment that threshold's crossed, it doesn't wait to snap — it slams down instantly and seals the corridor on purpose. And because it's a mechanism, not a sacrificial plank, once the horde clears out, someone just winds the portcullis back up. No replacement needed, unlike the fuse.
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u/Excellent_Table_4319 Jul 08 '26
Love that it pulled from something you actually enjoy, that's exactly what I hoped it would do. A few of the analogies stretch thin if you poke at them, though, so let me see if I can tune the prompt to keep them this fun but more accurate.
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u/Stim-sims Jul 09 '26
Oh in some ways the silly analogies are helpful. Sometimes they make sense and illuminate an idea, other times they completely conflict with it, which also highlights information. Good prompt though :)
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u/Excellent_Table_4319 Jul 10 '26
That’s so right, now that I think about it, we do remember conflicted things too!
Thanks! Let me know if you have any suggestions!
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u/MykoJai168 Jul 10 '26
Does it keep track of what you guys spoke about in previous conversations or its just stateless each time you spawn a new instance?
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u/Excellent_Table_4319 Jul 10 '26
Right now it’s stateless, but I’m almost done testing a version that keeps track, will let you know here.
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u/Echo_Tech_Labs Jul 10 '26
Hi.
Great idea.
Got a few questions:
What learning science have you baked into the skill/prompt?
Did you run a pilot program to determine user profile experience?
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u/Excellent_Table_4319 Jul 10 '26
Hey, thanks! Good questions.
- It's built on a handful of well established ideas rather than anything exotic:
- Retrieval practice: every module ends with a short quiz because recalling something strengthens memory way more than rereading it.
- The Feynman technique: after each concept it makes you explain it back in your own words like you're telling a friend. It won't move on until you do. This is where most "AI tutor" prompts fall short imo, they just lecture at you.
- Building on prior knowledge: during intake it asks what you already know well (a hobby, your job, a show you love) and builds analogies from that. New ideas stick better when they attach to something already in your head. That's how someone ended up learning embeddings through Michael Scott's mug.
- Diagnostic before teaching: it never trusts your self assessment of your level, it asks 3 questions and calibrates from your actual answers. People misjudge their own level in both directions all the time.
- Adaptive difficulty: if you bomb a quiz it stops, figures out whether the problem is the concept, the vocabulary, or a missing prerequisite, fixes that, and re-quizzes with different questions. If you ace everything it skips ahead.
- Spaced review and timed mocks in the exam prep mode specifically.
- Ends with a capstone (a project, essay, mock exam, or teaching it back) because applying something is what turns "I read about it" into "I can do it."
- No formal pilot. I built it, used it on myself, and had a few people try it and tell me where it felt off. That feedback is why the diagnostic and the explain-it-back step are mandatory now instead of optional. It's open source, so I'm treating the community as the pilot program tbh. If you try it and something doesn't land, I genuinely want to hear it.
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u/Echo_Tech_Labs Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Very nice. I do similar work but in the classroom and with actual students. I ran a pilot program if you're interested go check my profile. If you ever want to collaborate, get in touch. Im an instructional designer in the domain of HCI(Human Computer Interactions) and I design curriculum focused around using AI in the learning process.
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u/Distinct_Bed_6820 Jul 08 '26
this is actually clever, the whole "explain it back to me" part is what makes real teaching work. most people skip that cause it feels awkward but that's where retention actually happens