What an assistant can do

Once an AI assistant is connected to Spelling Creator, you can ask it for things in plain words, the way you would ask a colleague. It works in Spelling Creator as you, using your account, so anything it saves is yours and shows your name. This page covers what you can ask for, what it checks with you first, and how it keeps lessons in shape.

Write a lesson

Tell it the topic and anything else that matters: who the lesson is for, how long it should be, words or facts you want included, sources you'd like it to use. It writes the passages and questions, saves the lesson as a private draft, and gives you a link to open it.

A full lesson is a lot to get right in one go, so the assistant may build it a section or two at a time. Each pass is saved as its own version with a short name ("Add section 3: the cat's senses"), so you can see how the lesson came together.

If you don't want to use an account at all, ask it for a lesson file instead. It hands you a file to save, which you open in the editor with Import JSON (in the menu, next to Import Word document). Nothing is stored online.

The lesson it writes by default

Unless you ask for something else, the assistant follows the app's default lesson standards:

• 6 sections, each with an optional picture at the top, then two short paragraphs. Harder vocabulary in the passage is written in CAPITALS.
• 4 spelling words per section, each 6 to 9 letters long, related to the topic but different from the capitalized vocabulary.
• 15 questions per section, in a set order: 3 green (one fact from the passage), 2 purple (a number from the passage, then a word problem with worked steps), 2 orange (semi-open questions), 1 blue (background knowledge the passage doesn't give), and 7 pink open questions (4 quick one-word answers from everyday life, then 3 that invite a full sentence). See Question blocks for what each color means.
• No VAKT activities, "Would you rather" questions, sources or footnotes unless you ask for them.

These are defaults, not rules. Spelling is practiced in many different ways (see What is Spelling Creator), and no single approach is the standard one. Some of these conventions come from one particular source: the idea of semi-open questions follows the S2C (Spelling to Communicate) guidebook. If you work differently, just say so. Ask for four sections, a different mix of questions, longer passages or a different order, and the assistant will write it that way.

It checks lessons before saving

Every lesson the assistant saves is checked against those default standards first. These are the same checks behind the Check button in the editor (see Lesson checks): things like every green answer appearing word for word in its passage, no spelling word hiding inside an answer, and no question giving away another question's answer.

• Problems (things that would confuse a speller or mark a right answer wrong) stop the save. The assistant is told exactly what's wrong and fixes it, usually without you noticing.
• Suggestions (the usual shape of a lesson, like having 6 sections) don't stop anything. The assistant may mention them.

If you've asked for something the checks don't allow, such as a three-section lesson, the assistant can save it anyway. In some apps you'll get a box asking you to confirm, listing what would be skipped; say no and nothing is saved.

When it edits a lesson that already has problems (one written in the editor, say), it's only held to problems its own edit adds. It should still tell you the lesson isn't clean, and you'll see the rest in the editor's Check panel.

Edit a lesson

Ask it to fix a typo, reword a question, swap a spelling word or add a section, on a lesson you wrote. It changes the lesson straight away. Every change it makes shows up in the lesson's version history (the History tab on its hub page, or Version history in the editor) with a note saying an AI assistant made it, so you can see exactly what changed and undo it if you don't like it.

If you are editing the lesson live in the editor at the same time, bring the assistant into the session instead. See Live sessions.

Propose changes instead of making them

Sometimes you want to look before anything changes, or the lesson belongs to someone else (nobody can save over another person's lesson). Then ask the assistant to propose its changes. It makes a private copy of the lesson, edits the copy, and opens a proposal on the original. The lesson itself doesn't change until its author merges the proposal. See Proposals for how reviewing works.

A few things to know:

• The assistant gives you a link to the proposal and stops there. It never merges a proposal itself, even one on your own lesson.
• If you ask for more changes, it updates the same proposal rather than opening a second one.
• The private copy counts toward your limit of 8 private drafts. Ask the assistant to delete it once the proposal has been merged or declined.
• The proposal says an AI assistant wrote it. That matters most on your own lesson, where the proposal is opened under your name.

Deciding a proposal in the chat

In apps that can show interactive cards in the conversation (such as Claude), asking the assistant to show you a proposal brings up a card right in the chat. It shows the proposal's title, who made it, counts of blocks added, changed, removed and moved, and a short list of the changes. If you're the lesson's author or a trusted collaborator, it has Merge and Decline buttons; everyone gets Open in the web app.

The decision is yours. The assistant is told to wait while the card is showing, not to choose for you. A few cases still have to go to the web app:

• If the same block was changed both in the lesson and in the proposal, Merge is grayed out, because choosing between the two versions needs them side by side. Use Open in the web app.
• If the app can't carry your click back to Spelling Creator, the card shows only Open in the web app.

In apps without cards, the assistant describes the proposal and gives you its link.

Check facts

Ask the assistant to check the facts in a lesson, or it may do so on its own while writing. It compares numbers, dates and named facts (a country's capital, who discovered something) with Wikidata, the Smithsonian's records of volcanoes, and Wikipedia.

When a source disagrees, the assistant should tell you what the source says and let you decide, unless it's confident the lesson is wrong. Sources can be out of date or mistaken too. A fact about a kind of animal ("cats weigh about 4 kg") is never called wrong, only "couldn't confirm", since animals vary. See Fact checking for the same check in the editor.

Pick pictures

The assistant finds freely licensed pictures on Wikimedia Commons. (Pixabay, which the editor also searches, isn't available to assistants.) The required credit line is added under each picture automatically.

In apps that can show interactive cards, the pictures appear as a row you can scroll through, each with its license and author. You choose:

• Add to lesson puts the picture straight into the lesson (at the top of its section, when the assistant has said which section it's for).
• Use this one appears instead when the picture can't be placed directly; clicking it tells the assistant which picture you picked, and it adds it.
• Commons opens the picture's page on Wikimedia Commons.

The assistant is told to stop and wait while the pictures are on screen, so the choice is yours. In apps without cards, the assistant reads the descriptions and picks one itself. Either way, you can ask for a different picture, or replace it in the editor, which keeps it in the same place. See Images.

Publish, unpublish and tidy up

Lessons the assistant creates are private drafts until you decide otherwise. Ask it to publish a lesson and it goes on the public hub under your name, where anyone can read, copy and build on it. You need a display name set before you can publish (see Profiles). Ask it to unpublish and the lesson goes back to being a private draft.

It can also list your lessons, browse what's already on the hub (to find ideas or avoid writing a lesson that exists), and delete lessons you no longer want.

What it asks you first

Three things are your decision, not the assistant's:

• Deleting a lesson. This can't be undone, and the lesson's whole version history goes with it. If you only want it off the hub, unpublish it instead.
• Publishing a lesson. Putting a lesson in front of the public under your name is your call. Unpublishing is never asked about, since it only makes a lesson less visible.
• Overriding the lesson standards. Saving a lesson the checks would stop.

In apps that support it, Spelling Creator itself asks you with a confirmation box, and your answer decides. If you say no to publishing, the lesson is still saved, just as a private draft. Many apps can't show these boxes yet. There, the assistant is told to ask you in the conversation first, but Spelling Creator can't make it, so be clear about what you want.

For how the tools behind all this work, see the developer reference.