The diagnostic is short on purpose
Around fifteen minutes per subject, adaptive, and it stops as soon as it has bracketed you. A two hour placement test measures stamina more than it measures knowledge.
Stage two - Sequence
A path built from what you hold, not from the order of the contents page.
A syllabus is written for a cohort. It cannot know that your quadratics problem is really a factorising problem, or that you cleared coordinate geometry over the holidays. The path starts from a diagnostic, inserts the rungs you are actually missing, and rewrites itself every time new evidence arrives.
Path after the diagnosticRewritten
- Nature of roots. Not unlocked yet.
- Quadratic equations. Recommended next.
- Factorising polynomials. Needs review.Inserted by the diagnostic
- Algebraic expressions. Mastered.
Algebraic expressions was skipped as already held. Factorising was inserted from an earlier class.
The starting diagnostic
Fifteen minutes to find the floor, not to grade you.
The first session in a subject is an adaptive check that walks down the prerequisite tree rather than across the syllabus. A wrong answer on a Class 10 concept sends the next question one level lower, and it keeps going until it finds ground you hold cleanly. That floor becomes rung one.
- Start at your stated class. Two or three questions on the topic you say you are working on right now.
- Descend on failure. A miss does not mean more questions on the same concept. It means a question on the concept underneath it.
- Ascend on success. Clean answers move up quickly, so strong students are not held for twenty minutes proving basics.
- Stop at the bracket. Once the highest clear concept and the lowest broken concept are adjacent, the diagnostic ends.
There is no score at the end and no report card. The output is a ladder position.
A diagnostic walking down the tree
Q1Class 10 - solve a quadratic by factorisationWrong
Q2Class 9 - factorise a trinomial with a = 1Right
Q3Class 9 - factorise a trinomial with a = 2Wrong
Q4Class 8 - expand and simplify an identityRight
Q5Class 9 - split the middle term, guidedWrong
Bracket found in five questionsFloor is identities, blocker is splitting the middle term with a not equal to 1. Quadratics is closed until that rung clears.
Before and after
The same student, the same week, two different ladders.
On the left, the order a textbook would give. On the right, the order the diagnostic produced. One rung got inserted from an earlier class and the chapter everyone was about to start got blocked.
Syllabus orderGeneric
- Similar triangles. Not unlocked yet.
- Arithmetic progressions. Not unlocked yet.
- Quadratic equations. Recommended next.
- Linear equations. Mastered.
- Algebraic expressions. Mastered.
Everything below the current chapter is assumed cleared, because a calendar cannot check.
Diagnostic orderPersonal
- Arithmetic progressions. Not unlocked yet.
- Quadratic equations. Recommended next.
- Linear equations. Mastered.
- Factorising polynomials. Needs review.Inserted from Class 9 by the diagnostic
- Algebraic expressions. Mastered.
Quadratics is blocked, deliberatelyNot because the student is behind, but because starting it now would produce three weeks of confusion traceable to one missing move.
How it adjusts over time
Four rules that govern every change to your ladder.
Prerequisites get inserted, not assumed
If a Class 10 gap traces back to a Class 8 skill, that rung appears below your current position. The path is allowed to go backwards, because that is where the real blocker usually lives.
Mastered ground gets skipped
Concepts you clear in the diagnostic start mint and stay closed. Nobody should sit through a chapter they can already do because the syllabus put it in week one.
The path is rewritten continuously
Every quiz, every generated practice set and every repeated doubt is evidence. The ladder you see on Friday is not the ladder you started the week with.
Overrides you have
The engine sequences. You still steer.
- Pin a topic for a test. A unit test on Friday overrides the ladder order for that week, and the ladder resumes afterwards.
- Challenge a locked rung. If you think a block is wrong, take the check for it directly. Clear it and the rung turns mint.
- Set the pace. Rungs per week is your setting, not a target pushed at you.
- Add a subject at any time. Each subject gets its own diagnostic and its own independent ladder.
Why the override exists
A school calendar does not care what your ladder thinks.
There will be a chapter test on Friday whether or not the rung underneath it is clear. Pretending otherwise would make the product unusable during term time, so pinning a topic is a first class feature rather than a workaround.
What the engine will not do is quietly mark the skipped rung as mastered. It stays coral, it comes back after the test, and the ladder keeps telling you the truth.
Pinning a topic changes what you study this week. It never changes what the ladder claims you know.
Your ladder, day one
Fifteen minutes from now, you could know where you actually stand.
The diagnostic is the first thing that happens after you sign up, and it is the shortest honest answer to the question every student is quietly carrying: what am I actually missing.
Free tier stays free. One subject, a daily doubt limit, no card.
One evening, start to finishLive
Minute 0Sign up, pick a subject, state your class and board
Minute 2The diagnostic starts at your stated level
Minute 15It brackets you and stops, no score, no report card
Minute 16Your ladder exists, with the missing rungs already in it