Inspiration
As a recent IB graduate, I experienced firsthand how fragmented the IB learning process can be. Slides, tutoring materials, past papers, personal notes, and teacher feedback are often scattered across different folders and platforms. I would remember that a resource explained a concept well, then spend half an hour trying to find it. I also tried uploading everything to general-purpose AI tools. While they could answer questions, they did not truly understand how my course materials connected, how IB assessments work, or what I needed to review later. That inspired me to build IB Shell: one learning space where IB students can save, read, understand, and review their course materials without constantly switching between tools.
What it does
IB Shell is a personal learning workspace designed for IB students who manage large amounts of course material over two years. Instead of treating AI as a separate chatbot, IB Shell integrates it into a complete study workflow: Students organize PDFs, notes, and course files in a personal library. They open and read those materials directly on their phone. While reading, they ask AI questions about the current document and its context. Useful explanations and key ideas can be saved as review cards. The Review page brings those saved insights together for later revision. The core idea is simple: Study materials become answers, answers become review content, and review content remains connected to its original source.
How we built it
We designed IB Shell around the natural sequence of studying rather than around isolated product features. The experience begins with a mobile-first home page showing recent learning activity. A structured library lets students organize materials by subject and folder. The document reader keeps the source material at the center of the experience, while the AI layer allows students to ask contextual questions without leaving the document. We then connected AI responses to a persistent review system. Instead of letting a useful explanation disappear inside a chat history, students can turn it into a review card and revisit it from a dedicated Review page. This structure creates a continuous loop: Organize → Read → Ask → Save → Review
Challenges we ran into
One of the biggest challenges was building a genuinely effective RAG system. Products like Google NotebookLM already provide an excellent experience for asking questions across uploaded materials, so simply creating another document-based AI chatbot would not be enough. It was difficult to compete with or surpass such mature products in areas like retrieval accuracy, source grounding, and answer quality—especially within a limited development timeframe. This pushed us to think beyond the RAG technology itself. We realized that IB Shell’s value should not come only from producing better answers. Its advantage should come from understanding the IB learning context and connecting retrieval to a complete study workflow: organizing course materials, reading documents, asking contextual questions, saving useful answers, and reviewing them later.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that IB Shell demonstrates a complete learning workflow rather than only an AI chat interface. A student can move from discovering a resource to understanding it and creating something useful for future revision—all within one connected experience. The review cards are especially important because they turn temporary AI conversations into reusable learning assets. We are also proud that the product grew from a real problem experienced by an IB student. Its structure reflects how students actually work with course materials over a long and demanding two-year program.
What we learned
We learned that educational AI becomes more valuable when it is embedded in a clear learning process. Giving students an answer is only one step. The answer also needs to be grounded in the correct source, easy to save, and available when the student returns to revise. Context, organization, and continuity matter as much as the AI response itself. We also learned that students do not necessarily need more study tools. They need fewer disconnected ones. A focused workflow can reduce the time spent managing information and leave more time for actual learning.
What's next for IB Shell
Our next step is to explore how IB Shell can become a sustainable commercial product. IB is a relatively small but highly focused vertical market. Because it is too specialized for many large technology companies to prioritize, there are fewer products built specifically around the complete IB learning experience. At the same time, its users are clearly defined: IB students and families who already invest heavily in textbooks, tutoring, revision platforms, and exam preparation. This creates a strong opportunity for a specialized product that understands IB better than general-purpose learning tools. Rather than competing directly with large AI platforms on generic RAG capabilities and LLM power, IB Shell can differentiate itself through IB-specific features, including syllabus-aware answers, mark-scheme feedback, past-paper practice, personalized revision plans, and subject-specific study tools. We plan to continue validating students’ needs, improving the core experience, and testing a subscription model with free essential features and paid IB-focused learning tools. Our long-term goal is to build IB Shell into a commercially sustainable platform that supports IB students throughout their two-year journey—from organizing their first course materials to preparing for their final examinations.
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