Skribez AI Writing Assistant

Inspiration

As students ourselves, we noticed a gap: current AI tools either write for you or leave you hanging. We wanted something in between - an assistant that helps you think, draft, and revise, but doesn’t take over. So we built Skribez: an AI-enhanced writing tool that supports student agency.

What it does

Skribez is an AI-enhanced writing environment built for students. It has two main components:

Text Editor (left side): A clean, markdown-friendly word processor with formatting tools and image support.
AI Assistant (right side): A dual-mode assistant that supports writing in two ways:
Ask Mode: For conceptual questions, quick lookups, and research help.
Edit Mode: For in-context rewriting, edits, and exploratory drafting - inspired by developer tools like Cursor, but tailored for writing.

The goal is to encourage autonomous writing while giving just enough smart support to help students explore, refine, and defend their ideas.

How we built it

Frontend: React + Lexical for a flexible, modern writing experience.
Backend: FastAPI connected to two AI models via Anthropic APIs:
Groq: Lightweight, fast, and ideal for answering simple questions or making small edits.
Claude Opus: A heavier, more powerful model used for complex reasoning, nuanced edits, and deep research tasks.
We built dynamic routing logic between the two, so the assistant knows when to escalate from Groq to Opus for better support - giving the best of both speed and intelligence.

Challenges we ran into

Building a clean yet powerful dual-mode AI assistant took some thought - especially around UX clarity.
Getting Grok and Opus to play nicely together took tweaking, especially on fallback and redirect logic.
Tuning the edit mode to feel natural without taking control from the writer required some iteration.
Building our own text editor that supports edits from both people and AI agents

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Created a truly agentic workflow for writers - not just an AI chatbot glued onto an editor.
Leveraged Groq’s speed to deliver fast, seamless interactions while still enabling complex tasks with Opus.
Built a tool that satisfies the need of a large userbase.

What we learned

Students don’t want full essays - they want someone smart to bounce ideas off and help polish their own.
Groq, while lightweight, is surprisingly capable when used intentionally and paired with the right fallback strategy.

What's next for Skribez AI Writing Assistant

Media Management: Inserting and editing graphs, videos, and more dynamic content inside essays.
Assignment Integration: Connect with platforms like Canvas via API to allow students to work directly on their coursework. Reaching out to universities for collaboration.
More Personalization: Let users adjust how much help they want from AI and in what form — hints, edits, questions, etc.