When I tell people I am building a study app for medical and dental students, the first question is usually about AI. Does it have a chatbot? Can it generate questions? Will it summarise the textbook?

It does have an assistant. But I made a rule early on that shaped everything else: Medrilo has to be genuinely useful with the AI switched off. The assistant stays off until a student turns it on.

The feature is not the product

A student does not need a clever conversation. They need to know where their next hour should go, and whether they really understand what they studied last week. Those are questions about their own record: what they answered, how well, and how recently.

That work is not glamorous. It is careful data, sensible rules and a screen that tells you what to do today. But it is what the app is for. If I had started with the AI, I would have built a very impressive way to avoid answering the question.

Trust needs a page number

A wrong answer in a study app is worse than no answer. A student may carry it into an exam, and eventually to a patient. So the assistant has one job that matters more than sounding fluent: it has to show where its answer came from, down to the page in a real source.

An answer you cannot check is not help. It is just confidence.

Citations change the relationship. The student is no longer asked to believe the machine. They are given somewhere to look, which is what a good teacher does too.

Permission is part of the design

Making AI optional also forced a few decisions that I now think are simply correct. People consent before using it. There are clear limits. They can bring their own key. And nothing else in the app depends on it, so nobody is punished for saying no, or for being offline.

A test I now use everywhere

Before adding AI to anything, I ask what the product would be without it. If the answer is “nothing”, then I probably have a demo, not a product. If the answer is “something useful, and this makes one part of it better”, then it is worth doing.

Models will keep improving, and the assistant will improve along with them. I am glad that the reason to open the app does not depend on it.

Photo: chuttersnap, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.