Student AI setup guide

What this setup guide is for

This toolkit helps you get feedback and practise your writing, studying or research skills. It is there to help you learn, not to write your assessed work for you.

You can try it in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot, depending on what you have access to and what your course or institution allows.

Experiment with what works

Different AI systems behave differently, and they change over time. It is worth experimenting with a short piece of writing first. If the answer is useful, continue. If the AI seems confused, ignores the toolkit, or gives very general feedback, try a different model, a new chat, or a smaller piece of writing.

Where the AI gives you a choice, a thinking or reasoning option is usually a good starting point. A basic option can still be fine for short tasks, but very fast modes may not always follow a large toolkit instruction set well.

You do not need to use the highest or most expensive setting every time.

If you are using a free plan

If you are using a free plan, be careful not to run out of usage too quickly. Long chats, uploaded files and advanced models can use limits faster. If that is a concern, use smaller chunks: one sentence, one paragraph, one short section, or one reference list at a time.

Using projects

Some AI systems let you create a project, workspace, Gem, notebook or custom AI. This can make the toolkit easier to reuse because the file and instructions stay in one place.

This may be limited on free plans, but it can be useful if you have a paid plan or institutional access.

Useful guide pages:

• ChatGPT Projects guide
• Claude Projects guide
• Gemini Gems guide
• Microsoft Copilot Notebooks guide

Basic tip

Start small. Test one short piece of writing before using the toolkit for a bigger task. If the feedback helps you understand what to improve, the setup is probably working well.