Thinking Paper
Formative AI Creative Writing Environment
The Challenge
Wellington College needed a creative writing platform that would improve student writing skills — not replace them. Every existing AI tool generates content for the user. That's the opposite of education. They needed AI that teaches through questioning, challenges assumptions, and forces students to defend their creative decisions.
The Approach
We built four specialist AI agents — The Researcher, The Editor, The Critic, and The Contrarian — each bringing a different lens to the writing. The system reads assignment briefs and critiques against specific requirements, not generic writing advice. Defense Mode locks export until the writer justifies their creative choices, creating a verifiable audit trail of human authorship. Vocabulary and scaffolding adapt from Year 5 through to university level.
The Outcome
Students develop stronger writing skills by defending their creative choices rather than outsourcing them to AI. Teachers get unprecedented visibility into the writing process through a safeguarding dashboard. The platform is an entrant in the Agentic AI Pioneers' Prize (Innovate UK), recognised for its innovative application of agent-based AI in education. All data stays within UK/EU infrastructure.
This is what AI in education should look like — technology that makes students think harder, not less.