What you’ll see: a tutor’s debrief, from rough notes to a record entry.

1. 1 Paste the guide-coach prompt, then your rough session notes — the problem you’re having with this learner, in your own words.

   What you see: it reads the prompt and takes your plain-language problem. No account, no setup.

   You pasteOPERATION: COACH  (MP-13, the guide coach)
   CONFIG: mode coach, guide_type private-tutor, language English
   INPUT: She’s 12 and freezes on fraction word problems. She can do 3/4 + 1/8 on a worksheet, but the moment it’s “a recipe needs three quarters of a cup…” she stops and says she can’t.

   Your assistantThanks — I’ll work only from what you can observe, and I won’t put any label on her. Here’s what I’ve got.

   Two routes, both free: the plain prompts (MP-13 is the guide coach) pasted into any chat, no setup; or the tutor skill, ready now.

2. 2 Read what’s going on — it restates the problem as something you can watch for, with a one-minute check for each.

   What you see: the problem said back as behaviour, then two or three plain accounts of what might be happening — never a diagnosis.

   Your assistantWhat you described: she handles bare fraction arithmetic but stops when a fraction is wrapped in a word problem.
   
   What might be going on — and how to tell:
   1. The arithmetic is fine; the hard step is turning the story into a number sentence. Check: read the problem aloud and ask her to tell you the story back before any maths — does the freeze move or disappear?
   2. The reading load crowds out the maths. Check: strip the words to a bare sum — can she do it then?
   3. A “show me now” setting makes her freeze, not the maths. Check: let her think aloud while you just listen.

3. 3 Take the moves to try into the next session — each with its “why” and a plan sized to your minutes.

   What you see: two or three concrete strategies and a short, run-as-written plan ending with her narrating one problem back.

   Your assistantMoves to try:
   • Story first. Tell the story back before any numbers. Why: it separates understanding the situation from doing the sum.
   • Underline the numbers. Mark the two amounts and what’s being asked. Why: it turns a wall of words into a number sentence.
   • “Think aloud, I’ll just listen.” Why: it lowers the stakes that may be causing the freeze.
   
   Next session (12 min): 2 min recap of a bare sum she’s solid on → 4 min story-back on one word problem, no maths yet → 4 min underline-and-write the number sentence together → 2 min she narrates one problem end to end.
   
   Watch for: where exactly the stop happens — at the reading, the number sentence, or the arithmetic. Record it as one phrase.

4. 4 Send the parent-ready report. The same session, in warm plain words, with no label on the child.

   What you see: a short report you can send as-is — what you did, what worked, where it’s still settling, the one next step. This is Panel 2 of the finished example.

   Hi — a quick note on today's session.
   
   We worked on turning word problems into fraction sums. The big win:
   once she told the story back in her own words first, the maths came
   easily — the sticking point was the story, not the numbers.
   
   Where it's still settling: we're still getting used to spotting which
   two amounts the question is really asking about.
   
   Next time we'll practise underlining the numbers before we write
   anything down.
   
   She explained a recipe problem back to me better than I'd have put it.

   Open this screen: The Tutor’s Desk

5. 5 Keep the record entry — the carry-forward note that becomes next week’s starting point.

   What you see: a four-line record in the shape the next session reads back. A nickname only; nothing identifying.

   What happened:   Worked on fraction word problems; story-back, then
                    underline-the-numbers.
   What worked:     Telling the story back first — the freeze lifted.
   Watch items:     Where the stop lands (reading / number sentence /
                    arithmetic); confidence on "which two amounts?"
   Next step:       Underline the numbers before writing the sum.

How long this took

About ten minutes on our run: a minute to paste the prompt and the notes, a moment for the coach to answer, and the rest spent choosing which two moves to actually use. The report and the record entry came out of the same answer — no second write-up.

When it goes wrong

• You used a label and it came back as a finding. It shouldn’t — MP-13 is built to strip labels and work from behaviour. If a condition name appears anywhere in the answer, that’s a fault; re-run and report it. On our run it thanked us for the word and worked only from “freezes on word problems”.
• The advice is generic. That means the notes were thin. Give one real moment — the exact sentence she stopped on — not “she’s bad at fractions”. The coach will say so and ask for the one thing it needs.
• A name slipped into your notes. The coach will not echo it — it writes “the learner” throughout — but tidy your own copy before you send the parent report.

Run it yourself, free

It runs on the AI subscription you already have. The plain prompts paste into any chat with no setup — MP-13 is the guide coach; MP-11 and MP-12 build a course. The tutor skill wraps the same flow.

Have it done for you

Want it set up and run for you instead? Obsidian Delta, the company, sells that — done-for-you, paid. The Foundation’s work stays free; this is the way to have someone else do the work.

MetaDAX is free. It is built on paid compute. If it helped, a coffee on Ko-fi or a GitHub sponsorship keeps it going.

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