AI Assistant, Prep & Credits
How Tuitionable uses AI to prepare you for sessions, answer questions on the spot, forecast your learning, and how AI credits and per-feature costs work.
On this page
- Overview
- AI session prep briefs
- Where to find it
- What the brief contains
- When prep is available
- Regenerating
- AI Quick Assist (Ask AI & draft a message)
- Ask AI in the live room
- Draft with AI in chat
- Learning analytics & AI study tip
- AI progress forecast
- The baseline (always shown)
- The AI layer
- Session recaps & Ask the Session
- The lesson recap
- Ask the Session (Q&A chat)
- How AI credits work
- Your allowance and balance
- States
- When credits refill
- Per-feature credit costs
- Checking your AI usage
- Troubleshooting
- Related pages
Overview
Tuitionable layers an optional AI assistant over your everyday study workflow. It can build a focused prep brief before a session, answer a quick question while you are in the live room, draft a chat message for you, and forecast where your learning is heading. Every AI surface is metered with AI credits, so this page also explains how credits work, what each feature costs, and where to check your balance.
This page is for students. It covers the AI surfaces wired into the student area — AI session prep, AI Quick Assist (“Ask AI” and draft-with-AI), AI study tips on your Learning Analytics page, the AI Progress forecast, and AI session recaps with an Ask-the-Session chat — and the credit system that powers them all.
AI is a layer on top of the basic functionality that Tuitionable offers. When your credits are exhausted or a request fails, each feature quietly falls back to its standard Basic (rule-based) behavior. You can always book, join, message, and study without it.
AI session prep briefs
Before an upcoming session, Tuitionable can generate a short, practical prep brief tailored to that exact booking. You will find it on the booking detail page for any upcoming session, rendered as the AI session prep card.
Where to find it
Open a session from /student/bookings and view its detail page. For sessions that qualify, the prep card appears with a Prepare with AI button. The brief is generated on demand — it is not created automatically.
What the brief contains
The assistant looks at the session context — subject, tutor, schedule, duration, your booking notes, and how many sessions you have already had with that tutor or in that subject — and returns a structured brief with these parts:
| Section | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Your goal | One clear aim for the session. |
| Review before you join | 2–4 focus topics to look over beforehand. |
| Questions to ask your tutor | 2–4 smart questions to bring to the lesson. |
| Quick checklist | 2–5 short items so you arrive ready. |
| Confidence tip | A one-line encouragement to enhance your confident level. |
When prep is available
Prep is offered only for sessions that are ahead of you. A booking is eligible when its status is pending, confirmed, or in_progress, and it is not more than three hours in the past. Once a session is past or completed, the prep card no longer appears.
Regenerating
After a brief is generated it is shown on the card with a Regenerate prep button. Each regeneration is a fresh request and will consume credits again. A generated brief stays for the booking (it is invalidated automatically if the booking changes), so revisiting the page shows your last brief without recharging credit.
Credits are charged when a brief is successfully generated. If you have run out of credits, the card switches to a notice (“Session prep is paused until your credits refill”), and you can still join and run the session as normal.
AI Quick Assist (Ask AI & draft a message)
AI Quick Assist is a single, shared tool that appears in two places and runs in two modes. Both are gated by the same assist feature and consume credits.
Ask AI in the live room
When you join a session, the meeting room shows an Ask AI panel. Type a question — for example, ask the assistant to explain a concept clearly and simply — and it replies in a few short sentences or steps in plain text. This is “answer” mode and is meant for quick, in-the-moment help while you study.
Draft with AI in chat
In the messaging composer, a draft-with-AI helper can turn a short instruction into one ready-to-send message, which it drops straight into the message box for you to review and send. This is “draft” mode.
| Mode | Where | What it returns |
|---|---|---|
answer | Live session room — Ask AI | A concise plain-text explanation, a few sentences or steps. |
draft | Chat composer — draft with AI | A single, friendly, ready-to-send chat message. |
Each Ask AI request is a fresh, uncached call — asking the same question twice spends credits twice.
If you are out of credits, Quick Assist returns a friendly message instead of an answer (for example, “You’re out of AI credits — switched to basic mode”). It will never block the session or the chat.
Learning analytics & AI study tip
Your Learning Analytics page (/student/analytics) is a decision AI engine that reads your real session history and shows your learner type, study pattern, consistency, progress, and a recommended next action.
When the AI layer is on, the page adds a single, personalized AI study tip generated from your own stats (completed sessions, learner type, score, pattern, consistency, and progress). The tip is one or two short sentences and uses credits under your intelligence AI feature. It needs at least one completed session to generate, and it is cached for about 30 minutes so an immediate page refresh does not recharge you.
The rest of the analytics page — learner type, patterns, tutor performance, consistency, and next-action suggestions — is always available without consuming AI credit. Only study tip consumes credits.
AI progress forecast
The Progress forecast page (/student/forecast) estimates where your learning is heading. Unlike analytics, it is hybrid: a deterministic baseline that is always computed from your completed bookings, and AI enriches it with a narrative when enabled.
The baseline (always shown)
From your completed sessions, the platform computes a current score (0–100), a projected score, your momentum, pace, average rating, days since your last session, and a risk read. Momentum is read from your last 30 days versus the prior 30 days:
| Momentum | Meaning |
|---|---|
accelerating | More sessions recently than the prior month. |
building | Activity has started up after a quiet prior month. |
steady | Roughly the same pace as before. |
slowing | Fewer sessions recently than the prior month. |
stalled | No completed sessions in the last 30 days. |
The AI layer
When you have at least 3 completed sessions, the forecast adds an AI headline, a 30-day projected score, a trajectory (improving, steady, declining, or at_risk), an estimated number of weeks to a strong level, a confidence read, key drivers, and 2–4 actionable recommendations. With fewer than three completed sessions, the baseline is shown only.
The AI forecast is cached for about an hour, so opening the page repeatedly within that window does not spend extra credits.
Session recaps & Ask the Session
After a lesson is completed, your tutor can turn it into an AI recap you can revisit any time, and you can ask a friendly study buddy questions about that exact lesson. You’ll find these under Learning Workspaces (/learning-workspaces), which lists your completed sessions and shows whether each one has a recap yet.
The lesson recap
A recap is written in plain, friendly language and organised into four parts:
| Part | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Overview | A couple of simple sentences on what the lesson was about. |
| Key concepts | The main things that were taught. |
| Key takeaways | The most important points to remember. |
| Homework | Any tasks or practice to do (only when there are any). |
Your tutor creates the recap. As a student you are view-only here — you read the recap your tutor generated, but you can't edit or change it yourself. If a completed lesson has no recap yet, ask your tutor to make one if available.
Ask the Session (Q&A chat)
Open a recap and you can chat with a study buddy about that lesson — ask it to explain something again, give an example, or quiz you. It answers using only what was covered in that session. Your conversation will be saved and private to you, so you can read it up later; messages are up to 1,000 characters.
Reading an existing recap is free. Sending an “Ask the Session” message uses AI credits. If you run out, your saved recap and chat history stay readable — see How AI credits work.
How AI credits work
Every billable AI call spends credits from your balance. The system is designed to degrade gracefully: when you run out, your AI features fall back to Basic Mode.
Your allowance and balance
- Allowance — the credit ceiling you get. It comes from your active plan with upgraded credits; otherwise, it falls back to the standard Learner plan allowance (default
10). - Balance — how many credits you have left right now. Each successful, non-cached AI call deducts that feature’s cost and records a usage entry.
- Source — your AI Usage page labels your allowance as either From your plan or Standard allowance.
States
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Unlimited | Your allowance is 0 — use every feature freely; no balance is tracked. |
| Low | Balance has dropped to roughly 15% or less of your allowance — a heads-up appears. |
| Exhausted | Balance is zero — AI features switch to Basic Mode(rule-based) until credits refill. |
When credits refill
Credits refill when you renew or upgrade your plan. Tuitionable never charges you for a cached result — only a fresh, real call is billed.
There is no rate limiting on the AI helpers. Repeatedly regenerating a prep brief or spamming Ask AI will burn through your balance quickly. Generate when you actually need it.
Per-feature credit costs
Each feature has its own per-call cost. The values below are the platform defaults. The features available to you are derived automatically from your plan subscription, so your AI Usage page only lists the ones you can actually use.
| Feature | Key | Default cost (credits) |
|---|---|---|
| AI Session Preparation | prep | 2 |
| AI Quick Assist (Ask AI & draft) | assist | 2 |
| Student Learning Intelligence (study tip) | intelligence | 3 |
| AI Tutor Matching | matching | 1 |
| AI Progress Predictor (forecast) | predictor | 2 |
| AI Learning Roadmap | roadmap | 4 |
Checking your AI usage
The AI Usage page (/student/ai-usage) is where you can see your balance, usage and more. It shows:
- Your balance against your allowance (or an Unlimited badge), with the source labelled as plan or standard.
- Your current subscription plan and how many sessions it has left, if you have one.
- A per-feature breakdown of your usage over the last 30 days — credits and call counts — alongside each feature’s cost.
- Banners when your credits are running low or have expired.
The session-prep card, the analytics page, and the forecast page each show a smaller credit indicator (for example, “
N / M credits” or an Unlimited AI badge) so you can see your standing in context without leaving the page.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Why & what to do |
|---|---|
| No AI session prep card on a booking | Prep only shows for upcoming sessions (status pending, confirmed, or in_progress). |
| “You don’t have enough AI credits” | Your balance is below the feature’s cost. Renew or upgrade your plan to refill, then try again. |
| Ask AI / draft says it switched to Basic | You are out of credits. The feature keeps working in Basic form; top up by renewing or upgrading your plan. |
| Forecast shows only the baseline, no AI narrative | The AI forecast needs at least 3 completed sessions and the predictor feature enabled. Until then, only the deterministic baseline is shown. |
| No AI study tip on Learning Analytics | The study tip needs at least one completed session and the intelligence feature enabled. The rest of the analytics page works without it. |
| Asking the same question keeps costing credits | Ask AI is uncached on purpose — each enquiry is a fresh, billed call. |
Related pages
- Booking a Session — where the AI session prep card located.
- Live Sessions & Classroom — the online session where Ask AI appears.
- AI Learning Roadmap — a credit-billed AI study plan with live progress.
- Student Plans & Free Trial — how plans grant your AI allowance.