Classway: AI Academic Assistance in the Browser
Students do most of their academic work in a browser. Research, drafting, reading, reviewing: it all happens in tabs. Classway was built to meet them there: an AI assistant that supports writing and comprehension tasks directly in the browser, without requiring a separate tool or workflow switch.
The goal was not to do the work for students. It was to reduce the friction of the mechanical parts of academic writing so they could focus on the thinking.
What We Built
Writing Assistance
- Context-aware sentence rephrasing: not word swapping, but structural rewriting that preserved meaning while improving clarity
- Academic tone calibration: adjustments appropriate for formal writing without stripping the student's voice
- Grammar and clarity improvements with explanations, not just corrections
- Essay structure assistance: helping students organize arguments, not write them wholesale
Summarization & Comprehension
- Automatic condensation of long texts into key ideas, for research papers, textbook chapters, and reference materials
- Key concept extraction organized for note-taking
- Simplified explanations of complex passages, accessible without being patronizing
Privacy & Performance
- Processing designed to minimize what data leaves the user's machine
- Low-latency responses: the extension had to be fast enough to not interrupt the study flow
- Minimal browser footprint: did not slow down tabs or consume excessive memory
The UX Design Challenge
Academic tools are used under time pressure. Students open them mid-assignment, mid-reading, mid-deadline. The interface had to be immediately usable without onboarding: visible when needed, out of the way when not. We designed the extension UI around one principle: no action should take more than two steps from when the student decides they want help.
My Role
- Led product design and Chrome extension development from concept to deployment
- Designed the UI and interaction model for in-browser academic assistance
- Built the AI writing and summarization pipeline
- Managed Chrome Web Store submission and compliance requirements
- Optimized performance for low-latency in-browser use