Slash commands — ready-made asks

Knowing what to ask a tutor is its own skill — and children don't always have it yet. Slash commands are a shortcut around that: a small menu of ready-made asks, sitting right in the message box of every web tutor room.

Try it now

In any tutor room, type / at the very start of the message box. A little menu pops up. Keep typing to narrow it down — /qu jumps straight to /quiz. Tap one, and the full message appears in the box, ready to edit or send.

On a computer, the message box even hints at it: "Type your answer… (@ switches tutor · / for prompts)".

---

Nothing sends itself

Picking a command only fills in the message box — it never sends on its own. Your child can add to it, change it, or delete it and type something else entirely before pressing send. Slash commands are a starting point, not an autopilot.

@ does the same trick for switching tutors Type @ at the start of the box instead of /, and a menu of tutors opens — handy for hopping from one subject to another without leaving the room.

---

The commands every subject tutor shares

Professor Pi, Quill, Darwin, Curie, Newton, Harari and Mercator all offer the same five:

Command	What it does
/homework	Asks for help with that subject's homework, worded for the room you're in.
/example	Asks for a worked example before your child tries one themselves.
/hint	Asks for a hint on whatever's on screen.
/quiz	Asks the tutor to quiz your child on their flashcards.
/cards	Turns today's session into flashcards, ready for review.
/log	Wraps up the session and adds it to your dashboard summary.

Each room's own extra

Beyond the shared five, most subject rooms add one command that's particular to how that subject is best taught:

Command	Room	What it does
/essay	Professor Quill · English	Plans an essay paragraph together.
/explain	Professor Darwin · Biology	Explains how something in the body (or another living system) works.
/picture	Professor Curie · Chemistry	Builds a mental picture of what's happening in a reaction.
/predict	Professor Newton · Physics	Predicts what happens before seeing the result.
/source	Professor Harari · History	Weighs up a historical source.
/place	Professor Mercator · Geography	Thinks through a place and the people in it.

(Professor Pi doesn't have a sixth command here — /example, above, already is Pi's worked-example move.)

Mentor's own commands

Mentor doesn't teach a subject, so most of its commands are different — though it keeps /quiz and /cards from the shared list above, since those work in any room:

Command	What it does
/focus	Helps your child figure out what to work on today.
/quiz	Asks Mentor to quiz your child on their flashcards.
/cards	Turns today's session into flashcards, ready for review.
/plan	Plans out the week ahead.
/genius	Finds out your child's Learning Genius — how they respond to a challenge. This one disappears from the menu once your child has done it.
/debate	Challenges Mentor to a friendly debate: your child picks a topic, argues their side, and Mentor argues the other — then gives feedback on how they argued, never a score or a "you won" verdict. The feedback covers their claim, their evidence, how they handled Mentor's counter-arguments, and playing fair — plus one specific thing to try next time.

---

For parents

Slash commands exist so your child never needs to already know how to "prompt" an AI well — they can just tap. Every command asks the tutor to teach, never to hand over an answer: a hint, a worked example, a question to think through — the same Socratic approach as everything else the tutors do.

/log writes that session straight into your dashboard summaries, and a debate started with /debate shows up there too — so a friendly argument about a topic is just as visible to you as a maths session would be.

---

See the whole faculty · Tutoring on the web · Learning Genius