Reference
Concepts
The ideas the whole product stands on, explained once and precisely. Every panel has a stable anchor, so the guides — and you — can deep-link straight to a definition.
The Three R’s mastery gate
#gate
Before any advanced subject unlocks, a learner must genuinely master the three foundations: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic. The gate is immutable — no learner, parent, teacher, or administrator can lower or bypass it. That single rule is what makes everything downstream trustworthy: if a subject is open, it was earned.
A closed gate is never a verdict. Denial is always framed as “not yet, and here is the path”: what is already mastered, what remains, and the concrete next step. During the private preview, unlock decisions are deliberately conservative while independent expert calibration completes — learning itself is never blocked; only the unlock of advanced subjects waits.
The six-metric assessment
#metrics
There are no pop quizzes and no standalone tests. Assessment runs continuously — and invisibly — inside the dialogue itself, across six metrics:
- Accuracy — is the answer right?
- Fluency — how quickly and smoothly does it come?
- Reasoning — can the learner explain why?
- Struggle — productive or unproductive? Productive struggle is allowed on purpose; it’s where learning happens.
- Consistency — does it hold across sessions, not just on a good day?
- Retention — invisible spaced re-checks, days or weeks later, confirm it stuck.
Every parent-facing number traces to real recorded events. Nothing is fabricated, ever.
Socratic dialogue & neutrality
#socratic
The tutor asks; it doesn’t tell. Instead of handing over answers, it builds a chain of questions that leads the learner to construct the answer — and the reasoning behind it — themselves. The skill being trained is thinking, not recall.
On contested topics, the tutor presents every credible perspective with its evidence and renders no verdict. It teaches how to weigh claims, not what to conclude — that judgment belongs to the learner and their family. Only approved content bundles are ever served.
Adaptive gamification
#gamification
Celebration and game-like intensity are adaptive: the tutor dials them up when they motivate — sustained engagement, or an explicit learner or parent request — and down when they distract, chase points, or pull focus off the problem.
The parent cap is a hard ceiling (setting it to zero disables gamification entirely), and none of it ever touches mastery, the gate, or what content unlocks — it is atmosphere, never substance.
Voice
#voice
Voice adds read-aloud, dictation, and pronunciation practice. It is adaptive: it fires only when pedagogically valuable — for example, an early reader facing text they can’t yet decode — rather than narrating everything all the time.
Voice requires consent (parental consent for minors) and degrades gracefully to text if the connection fails — a lesson never dies mid-sentence. Voice is billed as metered AI usage like everything else — current rates are on the pricing page.
Personal Library (local-first)
#library
Bring your own books and documents. Personal Library content is stored only on your device — the tutor uses it as reference during lessons, and it never leaves the device. Servers never receive the content.
By design, Personal Library material never affects the mastery gate: private content can enrich a lesson, but mastery is proven only through the tutor’s own recorded evidence.
Analog Practice
#analog
Real paper still counts. Analog Practice connects physical books and handwriting to the tutor: an honor-system reading log, read-aloud practice, and handwriting capture — photograph a worked page and it is OCR’d on the device into a scored work sample. The image itself is never uploaded.
Analog Practice is consent-gated, additive, and never required. It widens what the tutor can see; it never becomes homework about the app.
Proficiency Pathways
#pathways
When sustained strength shows at a sub-skill — say, fluent arithmetic — the learner may receive one gentle enrichment invitation, such as competition math. An invitation is exactly that: an open door, not a label.
- Never a talent verdict — it describes an opportunity, not the child.
- Never consequential — no effect on the gate, grades, or billing.
- Dismissible and frequency-capped — and a parent can cap or disable invitations entirely.
During the private preview, invitations may be unavailable until independent fairness review completes — deliberately fail-closed.
Grade-level estimate (with uncertainty band)
#grade
For each learning track, the tutor can estimate a grade level anchored to a named external standard — for example, CCSS/Lexile for reading. It is always shown as an uncertainty band, never a single confident number, and always labeled “tutor estimate, not a standardized test.”
The estimate is shown only after an independent subgroup-fairness review passes; during the private preview it may show as unavailable — fail-closed by design. It never influences the mastery gate.
The evidence surface
#evidence
Parents and teachers don’t get a mood ring; they get evidence: a trajectory per metric, a mastery map (conquered / in progress / locked), and work samples — every element traceable to the learner’s real activity.
The surface is guardianship-scoped: you see only your own learners, and a teacher sees only their own class. The parent guide and educator guide tour it screen by screen.
Consent & privacy (including erasure)
#privacy
Age is captured at signup, and the default is the most protective one: a minor cannot be scored, recorded, or spoken to by voice before recorded parental consent — fail-closed. Adults self-consent. Consent history lives in an append-only ledger, and consent can be revoked at any time.
- Local-first raw content — Personal Library documents and handwriting images stay on the device; servers store scores and provenance, not your files.
- Right to erasure — on request, personal data is purged and the learner’s identifiers in the permanent audit log are cryptographically shredded, making them irrecoverable. The product is designed for GDPR-style rights (erasure on request).
- Classroom isolation — teacher visibility follows a FERPA-style boundary; a teacher never sees another class’s learners.
To exercise erasure or any privacy right, email keith@gusit.de (cc gus@gusit.de) with the subject “Privacy request.”