AI Uni Tutor

by Jack

AI-powered study platform where top-scoring seniors provide verified answers, delivered via RAG — solving the hallucination problem that plagues generic AI tutors.

The Problem

University students waste hours searching for reliable study help — but generic AI tools hallucinate answers, tutors cost $50-80/hr, and online forums are hit-or-miss. For courses like COMP9417 (Machine Learning) at UNSW, one wrong explanation of gradient descent or regularization can cascade into a failed exam. Students need answers they can trust, not AI-generated guesses.

The Build

AI Uni Tutor — an AI-powered study platform where top-scoring seniors provide the answers, and AI delivers them at scale.

The core insight: instead of letting AI generate answers (and hallucinate), we have high-distinction seniors write verified solutions for each course. These are uploaded as structured knowledge — lecture notes, exam solutions, assignment walkthroughs — then indexed via vector embeddings (pgvector). When a student asks a question, the AI retrieves and explains the senior's actual answer, grounded in course materials with citations. No hallucination, because the source of truth is human expertise, not LLM imagination.

Tech stack: Next.js 16 + Supabase (auth + pgvector) + Google Gemini + Stripe + Upstash Redis

Key features:

  • Senior-verified knowledge base: Top-scoring students provide solutions per course — AI retrieves, never invents
  • RAG-grounded answers: Every response cites the specific course material it draws from — students can verify
  • 3 tutoring modes: Lecture Helper (concept explanations), Assignment Coach (guided thinking, no direct answers), Exam Prep (practice with real past papers)
  • Document pipeline: Lecture slides, past exams, senior notes → LLM-parsed into structured knowledge points → vector-indexed for retrieval
  • Mock exam engine: Real past papers, randomized mixes, or AI-generated questions — all grounded in uploaded course materials
  • Bilingual: Full English + Chinese support
  • Freemium SaaS: Free tier + Pro subscription via Stripe

Results

  • Live and serving real UNSW students, starting with COMP courses
  • Zero hallucination by design — answers come from verified senior solutions, not AI generation
  • Students get the quality of a $80/hr tutor at a fraction of the cost, available 24/7
  • Sub-second streaming responses with citation tracking
  • 370+ commits, clean architecture, full CI/CD on Vercel
  • Exploring B2B partnerships with tutoring institutions for multi-campus expansion

Tags

educationnextjsai-tutorragsupabasegeminiedtechsaas