SM AISign in

Know what’s due, what you need on the test, and how to start.

SM AI connects to your school’s Canvas and puts tonight on one calm screen, with a tutor that has read the directions. Free during the beta.

Sign inHow it works

Setup takes about two minutes: a Canvas token you make, and a Claude key a parent makes.

How it works

  1. Sign in with your email.

    We email you a link. No password, and nothing for your school to set up.

  2. Connect Canvas and a Claude key in Settings.

    About two minutes: your school’s Canvas address, a personal access token you make in Canvas, and a Claude key a parent makes at console.anthropic.com (Anthropic requires account holders to be 18). The app only reads from Canvas. Nothing is ever written back.

  3. Open it tonight.

    See what’s due and how long it will take. Check things off. Ask the tutor about the one you’re stuck on.

What you need on the next test

Canvas shows your grade. It doesn’t tell you what the next test has to be for that grade to stay where it is. This does: one line under each class, worked out from the category weights your teacher set.

Canvas already offers what-if grades for scores you type in yourself. This is the forward version.

A plan, not a reminder

A reminder says “lab write-up, due Thursday”. A plan says: when I get home Tuesday, then I start the lab write-up. One tap turns any due item into that sentence, with the “when” guessed from the hour you usually work.

The “when X, then Y” form is one of the best-replicated findings in goal research: people who write a plan that way follow through more often than people with the same goal and no plan.

Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006), meta-analysis of implementation intentions; effect on goal attainment d ≈ 0.65.

Two questions when you check it off

Rereading your notes feels like studying. Being asked a question and answering from memory is what works. So when you mark an assignment done, the tutor asks two or three quick questions from the directions and your own chat. It asks again a few days later, and once more before the test. A minute each time. Nothing is graded, nothing is shared.

Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated practice testing and spaced practice as the only two “high utility” study techniques; a later meta-analysis of retrieval practice found g ≈ 0.61 (Adesope and colleagues, 2017). This improves memory for the material. It is not a grade guarantee.

Calm on purpose

Most homework apps raise your heart rate to get you moving: streaks, red walls, a score that says how cooked you are. The research on that kind of pressure is not good. In a large multi-year study of nudges and reminders, students did not do better, and some lowered their expectations instead. So this app does the opposite.

  • Tonight is a number of hours, not a verdict.
  • Missing work is a recovery list: what can still be turned in late, and what can’t.
  • A lights-out line, from your first period and the sleep range doctors recommend for teenagers, tells you when to stop and what to move to tomorrow.
  • No streaks. No late-night pings. The one loud thing is a red banner when Canvas sync fails, because that one you need to see.

Oreopoulos and Petronijevic (2019), NBER w26059; Damgaard and Nielsen (2018).

What it keeps, and who sees it

Your Canvas token and your Claude key are stored encrypted. Your classes, assignments and chats are stored under your account.

Nothing is sold. No ads, ever. No social feed, so nobody at school sees your work.

The tutor runs on Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Your assignment text and your questions go to Anthropic to get an answer, under a key your family owns.

The full list of what is stored, who sees it, and how to export or delete it is on the privacy page. The rules for using it are in the terms.

What a parent should know

  • It reads your student’s courses, assignments, directions, rubrics, due dates and submission status from Canvas. It does not read Canvas messages, and it never sees other students’ data.
  • It never submits anything to Canvas or changes anything there. Checking something off happens in the app only.
  • The tutor explains, plans and checks a draft. It does not write assignments.
  • Built by Ethan Strauss, a high-school student in Santa Barbara. It is not affiliated with Instructure or with any school district.

Questions

Does my school need to approve it?

No. You sign in with your own email, then paste a Canvas access token you make yourself (Canvas → Account → Settings → “+ New Access Token”). That is the only way in until a school issues a developer key. Some schools turn token creation off; if yours does, it will not work there yet. District sign-in is being worked on, but no school has approved it, and we will not pretend one has.

What does it cost?

SM AI itself is free. The tutor uses a Claude key a parent makes at console.anthropic.com, and Anthropic bills them for what it uses, usually a few cents a chat. You get 25 tutor messages a day. A Plus plan for $4.99 a month, with no key to set up, is coming soon.

What does it read from Canvas?

Courses, teacher names, assignments, assignment directions, rubrics, due dates and points, and whether something was submitted. Not Canvas messages. Not other students. It never writes anything back to Canvas.

Can my parents see my grades?

No. There is no parent view and no weekly email. Reminders are yours to set up, they go to the address you enter, and they never include your chats. The one part a parent handles is the Claude key, because Anthropic requires account holders to be 18 or older.

My school uses Google Classroom or Schoology. Does it work?

No. It works with Canvas only, and that is not changing during the beta.

Who made this?

Built by Ethan Strauss, a high-school student in Santa Barbara, for his own classes first. It is not made by Instructure or by any school district.

Is it on the App Store?

Not yet. It is a web app you can add to your home screen on iPhone, and a Mac app is in progress.