Thinking
Develop your thinking.
AI should redefine how you think, not substitute it.
Students are already using AI on personal accounts, outside anything a school can see. Tau provides a school-controlled AI chat for coursework, together with a record of how each student used it: the questions they asked, the claims they challenged, and the ideas that were their own.
For teachers and schools. Students are enrolled by their teacher.
The finished essay
A finished essay tells you what a student produced. It does not tell you how they produced it: whether they interrogated the AI's first answer or accepted it, whether the argument developed across drafts or arrived complete. Two students can submit comparable work having done entirely different thinking.
Tau starts from the assumption that AI was part of the process, and documents that process — so the drafting becomes something you can teach into rather than something you have to infer.
The report
After each draft, Tau produces a report on how the student worked. Four dimensions, each scored 1 to 5, with the evidence behind every score kept alongside it.
Prompting Quality
Whether the student followed up and pressed the AI, or accepted its first response.
Selective Use
What the student did with the material the AI produced.
Calibrated Skepticism
Where the student disagreed, corrected, or asked for evidence.
Original Contribution
How much of the finished draft originated with the student.
Prompting Quality
2 turns responded to what the AI said, out of 4. Responding to what the AI actually says — rather than giving it instructions — is what makes it a back-and-forth.
Selective Use
No content extraction; 4 of 4 turns were high-agency. The student was testing their own ideas rather than collecting the AI's.
Calibrated Skepticism
2 turns pushed back: one rejected a claim, one refined it. Pushing back is how errors get caught and how an idea becomes the student's own.
Original Contribution
Of 7 essay concepts traced: 2 the student's, 3 developed together, 2 the AI's.
The four dimensions
Each score is followed by the sentence that explains it
The four dimensions and the total are stated in plain language, at a reading level a Year 9 student manages without help. No percentages, no letter grades, and no ranking against classmates.
Your own note to the student sits at the top of their report, above anything the tool generated.
Became your essay
common to the form
The evidence
Every score opens onto the turns behind it
Each idea in the draft is traced to where it came from: the student, the AI, or the two of them working it out together. Turns the student argued the AI out of are recorded as well, whether or not they made the final draft.
This is the material a conversation with a student can start from, in place of an impression formed from the finished piece.
What students see
Students receive the same report on their own work. It is written as formative feedback — what to work on in the next draft — and never as a judgement on the one they have submitted. The four dimensions are the same four you see, so the vocabulary you use in class and the vocabulary the tool uses are the same vocabulary.
Integrity signals are teacher-only. They are enforced on the server, never appear in a student's view, and a school can switch them off entirely.
The teacher's view
Reports aggregate by class, by draft and by assignment, so what you read before a lesson is the cohort's pattern rather than thirty separate impressions. Nothing about how you set work or how you mark it changes.
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You set the assignment
The task, the drafts and the due dates — and how much help the AI is permitted to give at each draft. Full support at draft one, questions only at draft two, or the same level throughout.
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Students work in Tau
They research and draft in a school-controlled chat that behaves like the assistant they already use. Nothing to install; it runs in a browser on a Chromebook or a phone.
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The reports aggregate
One per student per draft, then rolled up across the class and the assignment. You mark the essay against your own rubric as before.
Where this class's ideas are coming from right now
Across the class
The students who need a look are already at the top
Missing work and students worth a conversation sort first. The list is a queue for your attention, not a ranking — and the flags are framed as prompts for a conversation rather than findings against a student.
- Submissions were spread across the week rather than clustered near the due date.
- Every student stayed in a single continuous conversation for this draft — worth a nudge to start fresh, since a long context window compounds errors the further it goes.
- Prompting Quality and Calibrated Skepticism came in lowest of the four this round — the class leaned on AI answers fairly directly rather than pushing back on them.
After each draft
Each closed draft is summarised in sentences
When a draft closes you get a short account of how the cohort worked: when the submissions came in, how the sessions ran, and which of the four dimensions came in lowest that round.
Working habits surface here too — a class that stayed in one long conversation for a week is a teachable point in itself.
Dimension trend, most recent draft-over-draft movement
Across the assignment
Whether the cohort moved, draft over draft
Movement on each dimension is reported with the qualification it needs: a dimension already at ceiling is marked as such rather than read as a class that has stalled.
This is the view that answers a head of department's question — not whether the class used AI, but whether their reasoning improved over the unit.
Where the teaching happens
Tau does not develop critical thinking. Teachers do.
What the tool contributes is evidence about where a cohort's reasoning is actually breaking down, early enough to act on. If half a class accepted the AI's framing without challenge at draft one, that is a lesson worth planning for Tuesday rather than a pattern you notice in the marking pile three weeks later. The instructional decision stays yours; it is only better informed.
Privacy
Student work is processed by Google's Vertex AI and stored in Google Cloud, in US data centres. Google does not use student work to train models. We sign a data processing agreement with your district before any student data is entered.
Integrity signals are teacher-only, enforced on the server. They never appear in a student's own view, and a school can switch them off entirely.
Common questions
Is this an AI detector?
No. Tau does not judge whether AI was used. It assumes it was, and reports on how.
How much extra work is this for me?
Setting an assignment takes a few minutes. The reports generate themselves after that — there is nothing to review, tag or approve. The reading happens when you plan a lesson, not when you mark.
What does a school have to set up?
Nothing to install. It runs in a browser on a Chromebook or a phone. An administrator creates teacher accounts; teachers create their classes and enrol students. Students cannot sign themselves up.
Does the AI train on our students' work?
No. Tau runs on Google Vertex AI, which does not use customer data to train models.
Who can see a student's integrity signals?
Only teachers, and a school can switch them off entirely. They never appear in a student's own view.
Does this replace my grading?
No. Tau never sees your rubric and never grades an essay. It reports on the process; the mark remains yours.