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How an Early-Stage EdTech Company Built Live Tutoring That Hands Instructors the Children Who Need Them

Operations3
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Five-Step AI Workflow with Human Oversight

Each step shows the workspace, what the AI completed, and what still needs human review.

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Estimates are directional and based on stated assumptions. All names, organizations, and identifying details have been anonymized in accordance with our confidentiality agreements.

The Transformation

How an Early-Stage EdTech Company Built Live Tutoring That Hands Instructors the Children Who Need Them

Before
An instructor used to plan each child's day by hand.
One instructor used to run the whole group at one pace, hands raised and waiting.
Instructors used to grade the day's work that evening and hand it back a week later.
An instructor used to decide each child's next unit from a gradebook.
After
every child's day planned off their own record
the session moving with the child, one step at a time
graded in seconds, feedback the child reads on the spot
gaps closed on proof, level moves held for a person
the six children who need you, with the evidence
Executive Summary

Every child's practice, from the minute the day's work is picked to the minute an instructor decides who needs them. The agents plan each child's session off their own record, tutor them through it one step at a time, grade every answer on the spot, and redraw the map of what the child knows. An instructor is handed six children with the evidence, not two hundred and forty with a gradebook. Five stations, run as a loop: what the instructor decides at station 5 changes what station 1 picks for that child tomorrow.

What Was Broken

An instructor used to plan each child's day by hand
One instructor used to run the whole group at one pace, hands raised and waiting
Instructors used to grade the day's work that evening and hand it back a week later
The real cost
An instructor used to decide each child's next unit from a gradebook.

What We Built

Five stations and 11 subagents. Each subagent carries its own tasks and its own refusal.

A4
Record Check
Pull each child's record: last session, open gaps, what got finished
A3
Set Builder
Match today's exercises to the child's open gaps and where they left off
A3
Step Coach
Explain each stuck step in words a child of that age uses
A4
Difficulty Dial
Watch answer time, retries and pace on every problem
A4
Attention Check
Spot rapid guessing, idle minutes and a pace falling away
A4
Score Desk
Score each answer against the worked solution, part marks for shown steps
A3
Feedback Desk
Return feedback seconds after the answer, while the child is still looking
A4
Gap Tracker
Update each child's skill map from today's graded work
A3
Path Planner
Reorder the child's path when a gap closes or opens, prerequisites first
A4
Risk Watch
Watch every child's engagement, completion and streaks across sessions
A1
Case Builder
Draft one intervention note per flagged child: what slipped, since when, what was tried

How It Runs

1

Lesson Selection

Nobody is asked anything here

Agents pull each child's record, find the gaps that block the next skill, and write a plan that reviews what is fading before it adds anything new. Nothing waits on a person here. A child whose placement never finished gets no guessed plan, they get held.

2

Live Tutoring

Nobody is asked anything here

Agents explain each stuck step in the child's own words, move the difficulty with the child's answers, and end a session early rather than push a child who has stopped trying. Nothing waits on a person here. A question off the lesson is never answered, it is queued for the instructor with its transcript.

3

Answer Grading

Nobody is asked anything here

Agents score every answer while the child is still looking at it, name the exact step where a miss happened, and send an answer no rubric covers to the instructor rather than guessing a grade. Nothing waits on a person here. Feedback the agents cannot tie to the child's own work is withheld, and the worked example shown instead.

4

Progress Mapping

Nobody is asked anything here

Agents redraw each child's skill map from the graded work, close a gap only when it holds across sessions, and queue any whole-level move for the instructor rather than making it alone. Nothing waits on a person here. A level move is never made by an agent, it waits at the instructor's desk with the sessions behind it.

5

Instructor Desk

A person answers here

Agents watch every child's engagement and completion across sessions, flag the ones slipping with the evidence attached, and draft an intervention note for each. An instructor decides every intervention, clears every level move, and reads every queued exchange. This is where a person works. Everything else exists so that six children, not two hundred and forty, reach this screen.

Where a Person Decides

Step 5, Instructor Desk. Decide the six interventions, Mateo's first, his two alerts have sat unanswered. Clear the five level moves and read the three queued exchanges. no agent calls a child's parent.

Operating Model

This changes how work flows through the team.

Role
Responsibility
Instructor Desk owner
Decide the six interventions, Mateo's first, his two alerts have sat unanswered. Clear the five level moves and read the three queued exchanges. no agent calls a child's parent.
Lesson Selection, when it goes wrong
Look here only if a child says their work feels wrong for them.
Live Tutoring, when it goes wrong
Look here only if a parent asks what the tutor said to their child.
Answer Grading, when it goes wrong
Look here only if a parent disputes a grade.
Progress Mapping, when it goes wrong
Look here only if a child's work has felt too easy for a week.

What Transfers, What Must Be True

What transfers
A person is in the loop wherever a child's level changes, a parent gets a call, or a flag on a child is closed. One station refuses to proceed on its own, Instructor Desk, and that is the one a person carries. Everywhere else the agents plan, tutor, grade and map, and reach the instructor only with the children who need them.
Instructor Desk stops for a person, and no agent calls a child's parent.
Every subagent says what it will not do. 11 of them do.
What must be true in your environment
The agent can read the systems your records already live in. This one reads 17.
Somebody owns Instructor Desk and has time for it.

Failure Modes

What breaks this pattern:

✗ The plan skips a missing prerequisite

The child gets new material that sits on something they never learned. Every lesson after that teaches them to fail, and the plan calls it progress.

✗ The tutor answers off the lesson

A child asks something outside the lesson and the tutor improvises. No instructor ever sees what the child was told, so nobody can stand behind it.

✗ A grade with no rubric

The agent scores an answer no rubric covers. The child learns the wrong lesson twice: once from the mistake, once from the grade that missed it.

✗ The level moves without a person

The agent drops a child a level on its own read of one bad week. The first person to notice is the parent, and nobody can say who decided.

Directional Outcomes

What the agent counts, and the station that counts it.

These counts are the tallies from one monitored run of the agents. They are not monthly or annual totals.

Plans written
Counted at Lesson Selection
21,400
Children set work above a missing prerequisite
Counted at Lesson Selection
0
Plans held for a person
Counted at Lesson Selection
84
Problems coached
Counted at Live Tutoring
246,000
Off-lesson questions answered
Counted at Live Tutoring
0
Exchanges queued to the instructor
Counted at Live Tutoring
212
Answers graded
Counted at Answer Grading
246,000
Grades a person overturned
Counted at Answer Grading
0
Answers held ungraded for a person
Counted at Answer Grading
410
Skill maps updated
Counted at Progress Mapping
20,800
Closed gaps that reopened
Counted at Progress Mapping
0
Level moves held for a person
Counted at Progress Mapping
96
Our measurement policy: We do not publish precise ROI without baseline methodology. Every figure above carries its basis.

What Runs Where

Every step names the subagent that does the work, the record it writes, the thing that raises a question for a person, and what it is allowed to touch. This is drawn from the source, not from a diagram somebody kept in sync by hand.

1Lesson Selection
subagentpick-next-work
writesstudents/<id>/plan/<date>.json
raisesplacement-unfinished
may touchstudents/<id>/plan/**, the record and the map read-only
2Live Tutoring
subagentrun-session
writesstudents/<id>/sessions/<date>.json
raisesoff-lesson-exchange
may touchstudents/<id>/sessions/**, the plan read-only
3Answer Grading
subagentgrade-and-feedback
writesstudents/<id>/grades/<session-id>.json
raisesno-rubric-for-answer
may touchstudents/<id>/grades/**, the session record read-only
4Progress Mapping
subagentmap-progress
writesstudents/<id>/map.json, students/<id>/path.json
raiseslevel-move
may touchstudents/<id>/map.json, students/<id>/path.json, the grades read-only
5Instructor Desk
GATE
subagentbuild-the-desk
writesdesk/<date>/<child-id>.json
raisesawait-instructor-decision
may touchdesk/**, everything else read-only

Stack

Every system this agent reads or writes.

System
Read at
Stations
the grade record
Answer Grading
2 of 5
the instructor dashboard
Instructor Desk
1 of 5
the lesson library
Lesson Selection
2 of 5
the lesson library's prerequisite order
Progress Mapping
1 of 5
the microphone transcription for spoken answers
Live Tutoring
1 of 5
the microphone transcripts
Answer Grading
1 of 5
the parent contact record
Instructor Desk
1 of 5
the path record
Progress Mapping
1 of 5
the queued tutor exchanges
Instructor Desk
1 of 5
the session record
Live Tutoring
2 of 5
the session records
Instructor Desk
1 of 5
the skill map
Lesson Selection
2 of 5
the skill maps
Instructor Desk
1 of 5
the student record
Lesson Selection
1 of 5
the tablet app the child works on
Live Tutoring
1 of 5
the worked solutions
Answer Grading
1 of 5
yesterday's session results
Lesson Selection
1 of 5
Next Step

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