Inspiration
Actually, the reason I started this project is because I realized that primary school students often struggle to complete a composition at home on their own. Parents usually don’t have the time or skills to guide them, and many children end up sitting there for a long time without writing even a single paragraph. This becomes very frustrating for both the child and the parent.
My inspiration came from my daughter’s experience at a composition enrichment class. In that class, the teacher would select a writing topic based on the students’ homework, and then guide the whole class through brainstorming and co-writing a full composition. During this group writing process, the students were very engaged, and the learning outcome was excellent—they picked up many new expressions and storytelling techniques.
In Singapore, there’s even a published collection of model compositions, all of which were collaboratively written by children under a teacher’s guidance. I believe that group writing is a powerful way for kids to learn how to write.
My goal is to build a tool where children can write together with virtual AI writing partners, under the warm guidance of an AI teacher—just like being in a group writing class, anytime, anywhere.
What it does
EssayBuddy is an AI-powered writing assistant designed for upper primary students. It guides students to craft thoughtful, well-structured essays with emotional and narrative depth. Key features: 🌱 Prompt Library: Modular writing prompts across 5 dimensions—thoughts, emotions, actions, language, and reflections. 🧩 Step-by-step writing support: Encourages thinking, planning, and revising. 🧠 Personalized guidance: Prompts adapt to each student’s input (e.g., character names, context). 📚 Reinforcement of language skills: Teaches descriptive techniques, useful phrases, and grammar tips. 📝 Encourages reflection: After writing, students are guided to highlight good phrases and lessons learned.
How we built it
We used: OpenAI GPT-4o API for natural language understanding and generation. Airtable as a structured prompt knowledge base, organized by grade level, composition type, and theme. Bolt.fun for the interactive writing flow design (currently prototyping). Custom prompt engineering to enable layered and modular guidance. We carefully deconstructed high-scoring student essays into reusable writing prompts, covering emotional depth, sensory description, and narrative clarity.
Challenges we ran into
Designing prompts that were clear but not leading—enough to help, but not write the story for the student. Creating a structured prompt library that could adapt dynamically to different writing styles, topics, and vocabulary levels. Aligning AI-generated help with real exam standards (like PLE in Singapore), which require originality and structure, not AI-style writing. Handling cases where students' ideas diverge greatly from provided prompts, requiring dynamic prompt adaptation.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Built a working structured prompt database with over 10 annotated essays and categorized prompts. Developed a modular framework for future scaling—can handle 100+ prompts and adapt to English writing, picture compositions, and more. Kept the voice gentle, encouraging, and age-appropriate—not robotic or generic. Got interest from real educators and parents who want to try the system when it’s live.
What we learned
Prompt engineering is more of an art than science—empathy and storytelling matter. AI is a powerful tutor, not just a generator—when used carefully, it can teach thinking, not just writing. Education-focused AI projects require more fine-tuning and domain knowledge than general use-cases. A thoughtful structure behind the scenes (like our prompt layers) leads to much better, emotionally resonant outputs.
What's next for EssayBuddy
Build out Builder Mode in Bolt.fun to create the full write-flow with dynamic prompt branching. Expand to P3–P4 picture compositions with multimodal image understanding (GPT-4o). Add feedback modules for grammar, vocabulary, and emotional tone. Launch a monthly subscription model for families and schools. Explore extending to English creative writing and bilingual prompts in Mandarin and English.
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