Mentor mode: improve your own lessons while playing them¶
The best quality check for a lesson is playing it yourself: as the author you notice typos, unclear questions and wrongly graded answers exactly where they happen. Mentor mode turns that play-through into a round workflow: annotate while playing, work it off in the editor - without interrupting the learning flow and without losing any of your learning progress.
Which lessons does this apply to?¶
The mentor features appear only on your own lessons - sets you created in the app, imported, or derived from a downloaded set via "Edit as a copy". On downloaded original sets and on analysis lessons from the chat import the lesson player stays unchanged; editing those still goes through "My contents".
The three stations of the workflow¶
1. While playing: collect mentor notes¶
Below every step of an own lesson - theory and exercise alike - sits the unobtrusive "Mentor note" button. Tapping it opens a small form:
- Category: what is the problem? (see the table below)
- Free text: what exactly should be improved?
"Save note" returns you straight to the learning flow. A step that already carries a note shows "Edit mentor note" instead - the note can be changed at any time or deleted with "Remove note".
Important: the note does not change the lesson itself. Your answers are graded as usual; progress and review scheduling continue unchanged.
| Category | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Typo | Spelling, missing characters, punctuation |
| Unclear wording | The question is ambiguous or easy to misread |
| Too easy | The exercise does not challenge (e.g. too-obvious distractors) |
| Too hard | The exercise overwhelms at this point of the lesson |
| Answer graded wrong | A correct answer is not accepted (or vice versa) |
| Other | Everything else - e.g. a theory paragraph that should be restructured |
2. On the summary: the punch list¶
At the end of the lesson the summary shows the block "Mentor notes (n)": every annotation from the run with its category and text. Each row can be removed individually - for example when you discard an annotation on second thought.
Below it, "Edit this lesson in the editor" leads straight into the lesson editor with exactly this set and lesson preloaded. The same editor link is already available while playing, inside the player's collapsible Options panel - in case you want to fix a mistake immediately instead of finishing the lesson first.
3. In the editor: work it off¶
When you open an own lesson that carries mentor notes in the editor, the panel "Mentor notes for this lesson (n)" appears above the wizard - your punch list, exactly where you fix it. For every note:
- Category and text sit right next to the steps you are editing.
- The trash icon marks a note as done and removes it - in sync with the player and the summary as well.
Because your learning progress is anchored to stable exercise identities, your review cards survive the corrections: a fixed typo or a rephrased question does not orphan any SRS history.
AI suggestions (optional, your own key)¶
Every note in the editor panel offers the "AI suggestion" button. It sends your annotation together with the affected exercise to your configured AI provider and returns a short, concrete revision proposal in your app language.
- The proposal is displayed only - it is never applied to the lesson automatically. You decide what to incorporate by hand.
- Like every AI feature this is BYOK (bring your own key): without a configured key the button is greyed out and points to Settings → AI.
- When nothing usable comes back, the app says so honestly - better no proposal than a bad one.
For notes on theory steps the request goes out without exercise JSON; the proposal then relies on your annotation and the lesson title.
Where the notes are stored¶
Mentor notes are a local authoring aid on your device - they are not shared learning content and are not synchronised between devices. Beyond that:
- They behave identically in both storage modes (server and browser mode).
- They survive reloading, restarting the app and re-entering the lesson.
- They travel with your backup: export → import restores the open mentor notes as well.
Why not edit directly in the player?¶
By design. A lesson that changes underneath the running player is a classic source of orphaned progress and inconsistent grading. Mentor mode therefore separates cleanly: the player collects observations, the editor changes content - through the same proven write path as every other edit. You lose nothing: the editor link takes you to the right place with a single tap at any time.
Practical tips¶
- Play like a learner, annotate like a mentor. Answer seriously - your own wrong attempts show you which exercises are genuinely rough.
- A short note is enough. "Distractor B too close to the answer" is worth more than a paragraph - you add the details in the editor.
- Empty the punch list. Remove a note only once the correction is saved - that keeps the list your honest remainder.
- Play it once more afterwards. The fastest proof that a correction works is the same path on which you found the mistake.