What is the hint ladder?

Four rungs of escalating help. Rung one orients you, rung two narrows the problem, rung three names the method, rung four works a fully solved SIMILAR problem and then says now redo yours. There is no fifth rung and no way to request one.

Can I make the tutor just tell me the answer?

No. The refusal is structural, not a personality setting. The function that reveals a hint takes no level argument at all, so there is no code path that can be asked for a fifth rung — the top of the ladder returns a worked twin and stops.

Isn't a worked similar problem basically the answer?

No, and the difference is the whole point. A twin shares the method and not the numbers. You still have to carry the method across to your own problem, which is the step that actually forms the memory.

The four-rung hint ladder: why Heddy never gives the answer

Every tutor in Heddy climbs the same four-rung ladder of help, and the top rung is a fully worked similar problem — never the answer to the problem in front of you. There is no fifth rung, and no way to ask for one.

This is the single design decision the rest of the app is built around, so it's worth being precise about what it means in practice.

The four rungs

Say you're stuck on a maths question and you ask Professor Pi.

Rung 1 — orientation. What are we actually being asked for here? You get a question back, not a step. Often this is enough; a large share of "I'm stuck" turns out to be "I misread it".

Rung 2 — narrowing. The problem gets smaller. Forget the rest for a second — what does the 3x on its own tell you? Still not a step. Still your move.

Rung 3 — the method, named. Now you get the tool. This is a balancing problem — whatever you do to one side you do to the other. You know what to do; you still have to do it.

Rung 4 — a worked twin. Pi solves a different problem, fully, every line shown. Same shape, different numbers. Then: now redo yours.

And that's the top. Ask again and you get the twin explained differently, or a second twin, or a question about which line of it you lost. You do not get x = 5 for your own question, because your own question is the only one that was ever the point.

Why there is no fifth rung

Because the moment one exists, everything above it becomes theatre.

If a fifth rung were available — even reluctantly, even after a fight — then rungs one through four are just the toll you pay to reach it. Every child would learn the shortest route through them within a week, and the ladder would become the thing you click past.

So the refusal isn't a setting, a persona, or an instruction the model has been asked nicely to follow. It's structural. The function that reveals a hint takes no level argument at all — there is no parameter you could pass to request rung five, because there is no rung five to name. When a ladder reaches its top, what comes back is a worked twin, and that is the last thing there is.

That matters because instructions to a language model are suggestions and code is not. Any tutor that promises "I won't give you the answer" while retaining the ability to is one persuasive teenager away from breaking the promise. Ours can't.

"But a worked example is basically the answer"

It's the most reasonable objection to the whole design, and the answer is: it's the same method and a different problem, and that gap is where the learning happens.

When Pi solves 2x + 3 = 11 in front of you and your question is 5x − 4 = 26, you have to do three things nobody did for you: recognise that they're the same shape, map his steps onto your numbers, and carry it out without a line-by-line to copy. That transfer is the skill. Handing you x = 6 skips all three, and a week later there is nothing in your head where the method should be.

This is also why the twin comes after three rungs and not instead of them. A worked example given to someone who hasn't struggled with the problem yet is a page they read and forget. Given to someone who has been circling it for four minutes, it lands.

What it feels like when it's working

Slower than you want, at first. That's honest and worth saying out loud, because the competing experience — photograph the question, receive the solution — takes about four seconds and feels wonderful for about four minutes.

What you get instead is the specific, slightly annoying moment where you go oh before anyone has told you anything. Every tutor in the app is optimised for producing that moment as often as possible. It is the only thing that reliably survives to an exam.

Where else the refusal shows up

The ladder is the visible version of a rule that runs through the whole app.

Professor Quill will not write or rewrite your paragraph. He'll interrogate it — but the voice on the page stays yours, because the voice is what's being assessed.
Professor Newton makes you predict before you observe. You commit to what you think will happen, then find out. Being wrong on the record is the fastest teacher there is.
Professor Harari won't give you a verdict on a source. You build the argument; he weighs it with you.
Flashcards show the front and wait. Same principle, smaller scale: retrieval before recognition.

The one thing that overrides it

There is exactly one situation where a tutor stops teaching mid-sentence and says something fixed, and it isn't about maths. Any indication that a student is struggling in a way that isn't academic hard-fails to the same line, every time, in every room:

If you're struggling, please talk to a parent or call Childline 0800 1111.

That rule sits above everything else in this article, including the ladder.

Updated 10 Sep 2026. Written by Duke Harewood, who builds the tutors at aitutors.me.