One document platform that writes, computes, tests and grades.
A course is written in four or five programs that do not speak to each other. The notes are in Word, the equations are in LaTeX, the quiz is in Canvas, the code demo is a screenshot, and the exam is a PDF somebody re-types into a gradebook at midnight. Each tool is fine. The seams between them are where the evenings go.
prosAIdon builds the two halves of a replacement: a document format that carries its own assessment, and a library of interactive modules that a document can put a student inside.
Source on the left, the live document on the right. The same file prints to PDF and grades itself.
A single @ introducer, one source file, and the output is a web page, a PDF, a
printable exam or a slide deck. What LaTeX and Markdown cannot do is the second
half: the questions are part of the document, and they mark themselves.
@qc(10)
Using only NAND gates, how many are needed to build a 2-input XOR? @q(fn: 4)
@graph(type=line, x=fanout, y=delay, title="Propagation delay vs fan-out", trend)
@data
fanout,delay
1,2.1
4,7.2
6,12.1
@end
That is the whole document. It renders, it prints, and question 1 is worth ten points whether the student answers it in a browser or on paper with a pencil.
252 directives. 52 question kinds. 49 widgets. 43 chart types. 10 paper venues.
Maths is written without backslashes (frac, alpha, leq) and typesets
through KaTeX on screen and Typst in the PDF. Beyond prose and questions there
are real instruments: a breadboard with a simulated ATmega328P that compiles your
sketch, a KiCad-class schematic editor running ngspice, a PCB studio, a CAD
kernel, a spreadsheet with about sixty functions that charts read from live, 3-D
terrain and maps, and slide decks with a presenter view.
Paper exams get a barcode and registration marks, so a stack of scanned sheets comes back aligned, cropped per answer, marked, and queued for review.
A course is a file and a folder. ECE231.course is text you can read, diff and
hand to a colleague; ECE231.lms/ holds the roster, grades, submissions and an
append-only event log, also text. A semester zips up and unzips on someone else's
laptop.
The same editor, installed, with the documents on your own disk. macOS on Apple silicon and Intel, Windows, and Linux as an AppImage. Python, C and C++, Arduino builds, speech and offline narration arrive as add-on packs you install from inside the app, so the download stays under 400 MB instead of three gigabytes.
| Latest | 0.1.8 |
| Platforms | macOS (arm64, x64), Windows x64, Linux x86_64 |
| Repository | idoc-desktop |
Installers are unsigned, so macOS and Windows will warn you on first open.
Forty-seven interactive modules for the things that do not survive a static page. You do not read about how a pipeline stalls; you watch hazards move through one. You do not memorise a truth table; you drop minterms on a Karnaugh map and watch it group itself.
Assembly simulators for x86, AArch64, RISC-V and LC-3, each with real registers, flags and a memory inspector. Bits as numbers and bits as characters. Boolean algebra, K-maps, integer overflow, floating point, Hamming codes and CRC. A Verilog simulator with a waveform viewer. A Smith chart you drag a load around. Antenna radiation patterns in 2-D polar and a 3-D dome. A shader playground with GPU printf. Solar system flight, celestial navigation, map projections.
They run at knowsy.duckdns.org, and a professor can open one on a projector without signing in to anything.
Drop minterms and the map groups itself, then reads off the minimal form, the hazards and the prime implicants
Drag the load around the chart and watch VSWR, return loss and mismatch loss move with it
Every planet on its real orbit, at a date you choose, with an n-body mode and a fly camera
Tune a counterweight trebuchet and watch range, peak height and impact energy answer back
A Knowsy module can be embedded in an IDoc paper as coursework. The module runs
in an iframe, the document sets the task, and the module reports what the
student did, never what they scored. A module that could post score: 1 is a
module a student can post score: 1 from, with the browser console open, and
every mark underneath it becomes decoration. The score is worked out on the
server, next to the roster and the audit chain.
Ten modules are wired this way for a digital logic course: bit interpretation, bits as characters, bit operations, boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps, RISC-V, x86, Verilog, the solar system and the shader playground.
The same source renders on screen, typesets to PDF with selectable maths, lays itself out as a printable exam with a barcode, and presents as a slide deck. The questions come along for the ride in every one of those.
Forty-three chart types. Every one of them is four lines and its own data.
|
Write Prose, sections, tables, figures, citations and ten paper venues from IEEE to a thesis. Maths without a single backslash. |
Compute Python and JavaScript in the page, C, C++, Java, Go and Rust in a sealed container. Spreadsheets, charts, 3-D terrain, maps and a breadboard that really simulates. |
Grade 52 question kinds that mark themselves, on screen or on paper. Rubrics, partial credit, randomised variants, and a gradebook that prints its own arithmetic. |
A document can hold a real instrument, and the instrument is text. Drag a part on the canvas and the source changes; edit the source and the canvas changes. That is what makes a wiring lab something a server can mark.
@EECad(sourdough) · the analog side is a real MNA solver, the digital side a simulated ATmega328P, and your sketch is compiled by avr-gcc before it runs
@EECad(schematic) · six lines become a circuit that ngspice will actually simulate, and it exports a netlist, a SPICE deck and a BOM
@octave · a square wave built from twelve harmonics, animating as the sum extends, with Gibbs overshoot refusing to shrink
There is more in the same shape. OpenSCAD and a BREP kernel for solid models you can export as STEP, a Blender-style mesh editor, a vector drawing studio, a graphing calculator and an RPN one, a coding notebook that runs Python in the page, a spreadsheet with about sixty functions that charts read from live, and sandboxes for logic, automata, chemistry, physics and music.
| Repository | What it is |
|---|---|
| idoc-desktop | The installed app. Public: downloads, add-on packs, the update feed. |
| IDoc | The platform. Engine, editor shell, accounts, the LMS, the deployment. Private. |
| Knowsy | The interactive modules and the class platform. Private. |
| blockloaders | Block formats and WASM tools behind the maps, terrain and 3-D. Private. |
prosAIdon · Dov Kruger · Satrajit Ghosh
