Socratic tutoring

The Socratic tutor creator turns a notebook into a tutoring session built on one rule: it never blurts the answer. You reason your way to each concept through questions, and the session only reveals a model answer after you’ve worked for it - or never, if you turn reveals off.

It exists because “act as a Socratic tutor” prompts share a famous weakness: ask a chatbot twice and it caves and explains. Notebooker sidesteps that structurally. The whole dialogue is written before you start - from your sources, with citations - and the session simply doesn’t put an answer on screen until the flow reaches it.

How a session flows

1. One question at a time. Each concept (“nugget”) opens with a single question - sometimes clarifying, sometimes a counterexample, sometimes a what-if. A progress ledger at the top fills in as you go.
2. Answer in your own words. There’s a scratch box to think out loud in; writing the reasoning is the point.
3. Check yourself. Press Check myself and grade your answer against a short checklist of the points a correct answer would cover. You do the grading - the session trusts you, and the summary reflects what you ticked.
4. Wrong turn? Get a question back. Tempting misconceptions appear as “I think…” buttons. Tap one and you get a counter-question that exposes the contradiction - never a correction.
5. Stuck? Ask it smaller. I’m not sure - ask me smaller gives up to three hints, each a smaller question that breaks the problem down. The last one points right at the key idea - but still asks.
6. The reveal, last. Once hints are exhausted, the model answer unlocks on the check screen, cited to the exact sources it rests on. Nail a concept fully and you earn an optional stretch question instead.
7. Finish with a map, not a grade. The summary sorts concepts into demonstrated, revisit, and needed the answer - so you know exactly what to reread. Copy the report or run the session again.

At synthesis difficulty, the final questions are capstones: they unlock only after every concept is done, and they can’t be answered without combining ideas from across your sources.

Options

Option	What it does
Number of concepts	3–25 nuggets (default 10) - a 10-nugget session is roughly a 20–40 minute sitting
Difficulty	recall (definitions and facts), application (reasoning with the material), synthesis (adds capstone questions)
Tutor persona	The voice of the session - “a patient, curious professor” by default; try “a drill sergeant” or “a friendly peer”
Show model answers	On by default. Off = pure Socratic: the session never states an answer, ever
Scope	A boundary like “only material through chapter 5” - later content is treated as spoilers and left out entirely

Grounded in your sources

Every question, hint, and reveal is generated from your notebook - not the model’s general knowledge - and reveals cite the specific sources they rest on. If the model tries to cite a source that isn’t in your notebook, the citation is dropped rather than shown. The scope option is made for textbooks and fiction: cap the session at a chapter and nothing past it leaks into the questions.

The study sheet

Every session also produces a downloadable Markdown study sheet laid out like a good problem-set book: questions and collapsible hints up front, model answers and checklists in an answer section at the back. Print it, or drop it into your notes app and quiz yourself away from the screen.

Socratic tutor, flashcards, or study guide?

• Socratic tutor teaches reasoning: work through ideas step by step, with your misconceptions challenged along the way. Best the first time you’re learning something, or before an exam or interview that will make you explain.
• Flashcards train recall on a schedule - spaced repetition keeps facts fresh over weeks.
• Study guides are for reading: a topic-by-topic reference you review rather than interact with.

They stack well: run a Socratic session first, then make flashcards for whatever landed in the revisit column.