PocketTutor

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  Start of the web

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  Add note that you want to practice

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  Flashcard from the notes

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  Question from the notes

Inspiration

Not everyone has a tutor or a parent who has time to explain something again when it does not click the first time in class. I wanted something that acts like that friend who can explain it simpler, any time, for free.

What it does

You paste in whatever you are studying, your notes, a paragraph from a textbook, anything. It gives you back a plain language explanation, five flashcards, and a five question quiz you can click through right away to check yourself.

How I built it

The frontend is Next.js and Tailwind CSS. There is one backend route that sends your text to an AI model and asks for the explanation, flashcards, and quiz back as a single structured response. The page then turns that into flip cards and a clickable quiz with instant right or wrong feedback. Nothing is saved to a server, it all happens in the moment you ask.

Challenges I ran into

Getting the model to return clean, usable data every single time took some trial and error, since it would sometimes wrap its answer in extra text. I also had to switch which AI provider I was using partway through after running into a signup issue, and rewired the backend to use DeepSeek instead.

What I learned

How to call an AI API from a backend route, how to write a prompt that reliably returns structured data instead of a wall of text, and how to keep a project small and focused on one real problem instead of trying to do everything.

What is next

Letting people upload a PDF or photo of their notes instead of typing them out, saving flashcards so you can come back to them, and support for more languages.

Built With

• deepseek-api
• next.js
• node.js
• react
• tailwind-css
• typescript