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Hey AI Breakers 👋

Your kid is stuck on fractions. You haven’t done long division since 1998, and the school teaches it a completely different way now.

Meanwhile, most AI tools will happily just hand over the answer. 😬

Today, you’ll build Study Sidekick: a Claude Skill you run side by side with your child. It explains, hints, and checks their work, but never does the homework for them.

✅ A Learner Profile with your child’s age, level, struggles, and interests
✅ A Term Map of what they’re learning at school right now
✅ An installable homework-coach skill that teaches with hints, not answers
✅ A “Check My Work” mode that points to the mistake without fixing it
✅ A Parent Mode that explains the school’s method so you can help
✅ A Weekly Parent Report that shows what’s clicking and what isn’t

Let’s build it 👇

👨‍👩‍👧 Important: This Is a Sit-Together Tool

Claude accounts are for adults (18+), so this skill lives on your account and you run it next to your child. That’s actually the best setup anyway:

  • 🧑‍💻 You open the chat, your child types or talks through the problem

  • 👂 You see every hint and explanation

  • 🏫 Check your school’s AI policy. Most welcome “AI as a tutor” and ban “AI does the work”. This skill is built for the first one.

🧒 Prompt #1 → The Learner Interview (your child’s profile)

A great tutor learns the kid before teaching the subject. Do this one with your child if you can. They’ll love being asked.

The goal:

  • Age, school year, and the subjects that need help

  • How your child learns best, and what makes them shut down

  • Their interests, so every example actually lands

✅ Use this to create the LEARNER PROFILE block your skill reads every time.

Prompt:

You are an experienced primary and secondary school tutor who adapts to each child's learning style.

Interview me (a parent) to build my child's LEARNER PROFILE. My child may be sitting with me and answering some questions.

Ask these 10 questions ONE AT A TIME. Wait for the answer before the next. Keep the tone warm and simple.

1. What's your child's first name (or a nickname), age, and school year or grade?
2. Which country or school system are they in? (This affects methods and terms.)
3. Which subjects do they want help with most?
4. What do they find easy? What do they find hard?
5. How do they learn best? (Seeing examples, drawing it out, talking it through, real-life stories, step-by-step lists)
6. What happens when they get stuck? (Give up, get frustrated, guess, ask for help)
7. What are they into right now? (Sports, games, animals, music, characters, hobbies)
8. Any learning differences or needs? (Dyslexia, ADHD, English as a second language, anything else the school has flagged)
9. How long can they focus before needing a break?
10. What are YOUR rules as a parent? (For example: never give final answers, always check spelling, reply in a certain language)

After the last answer, output one block titled "LEARNER PROFILE" with:
- Learner: name, age, school year, school system
- Focus subjects: ranked
- Strengths / Struggles: short lists
- Learns best by: top 2 styles
- When stuck: what usually happens, plus one strategy to handle it
- Interests: 3 to 5, to use in examples
- Learning needs: anything to adapt for
- Focus span: minutes before a break
- Parent rules: list

Keep it under 220 words. Use simple language.

🧠 Tip: question 6 matters most. A kid who guesses needs a very different coach from a kid who shuts down, and the skill will adjust to either.

🗓️ Prompt #2 → The Term Map (what they’re learning right now)

The biggest homework fight is “that’s not how my teacher does it”. This prompt maps your child’s current topics and the methods their school uses.

The goal:

  • The topics this term, in order

  • What “good” looks like at their level

  • The school’s methods and the most common mistakes

✅ Use this to create the TERM MAP block.

Prompt:

You are a curriculum specialist who helps parents understand what their child is learning at school.

Here is my child's LEARNER PROFILE:
[paste your LEARNER PROFILE from Prompt #1]

Here is what they're learning this term:
[paste the school's topic list, a term newsletter, or upload photos of recent homework sheets or workbook pages]

Do this:
1. List the topics for each focus subject, in the order they're likely taught.
2. For each topic, write one line on what a child at this age and level is expected to be able to do.
3. Identify the METHOD the school seems to use for key skills (for example: column method, number lines, bus stop division, phonics approach, essay structure like PEEL). Base this on the homework I shared. If you can't tell, say so.
4. List the 2 most common mistakes kids make on each topic.
5. Flag which topics are likely to be hardest for my child, based on their Struggles.

Output one block titled "TERM MAP" with:
Subject | Topic | Expected skill | School method | Common mistakes | Watch out (YES if likely hard for my child)

Keep it under 300 words.

💡 Tip: photos of real homework sheets are gold here. Claude can read them and spot the exact method the teacher is using. 📸

🎓 Skill #1 → Study Sidekick (the tutor that never cheats)

This is the skill your family will use every homework night. Five modes: help me understand, check my work, practice, test prep, and parent mode.

The goal:

  • Hints that build thinking, never finished answers

  • Explanations at your child’s level, using their interests

  • A parent mode that gets you up to speed in 2 minutes

✅ Use this every time homework comes out.

Prompt: paste the prompt below into Claude and then ask him to create and save the skill as homework-coach/SKILL.md


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