What it's like
Sunday night, thirty report comments due Monday? Give your AI assistant the rules an experienced teacher follows, and get your Sunday back.
You type
J.K. – gd effort, reading up 2 lvls, picks longer books now. fractions still shaky. chatty in ind. work. 80 words, UK, Year 4
You get
[Name] has made strong progress in reading this term, moving up two levels and now choosing longer chapter books independently. [Name] works hard in lessons, although chatting during independent tasks sometimes slows progress. In maths, fractions are still tricky. Next term, [Name]'s target is to check fraction answers by drawing a quick model. Practising with pizza or chocolate-bar fractions at home would really help.
Ordinary prompts give you "a pleasure to have in class". These skills tell the AI what experienced teachers know: lead with a specific strength, back it with evidence from your notes, describe behaviour rather than personality, give one next step a parent can help with, never invent achievements, and vary the wording across the class. It checks every comment against a checklist before showing it to you.
The free skills
📝 Report comments
Turn notes or grades into balanced, specific comments for a whole class, in your school's style and character limit. You can also fix your own drafts or build a comment bank.
✉️ Parent emails
Concerns, good news, missing work, meeting requests, and calm replies to angry emails. Factual, kind and short, with a clear next step. It also gives you a shorter version for the school app.
✅ Rubrics
Rubrics and success criteria with descriptors you can actually observe, plus a student-friendly "I can…" version. It can also diagnose a vague rubric and rewrite it.
Set it up (no coding, about 3 minutes)
1. Grab two things: the instructions and the guide (one file).
On a phone? Open the instructions and copy them from there.
2. Make your assistant in the app you use. Each video takes under a minute.
- In ChatGPT, click GPTs in the sidebar, then + Create.
- Open the Configure tab. Name it
Teacher Assistant. - Paste the instructions into Instructions (Ctrl+V, or ⌘V on a Mac).
- Under Knowledge, click Upload files and add
teacher-assistant-guide.md. - Click Create, choose Only me, and save. It's in your sidebar now.
Making a GPT needs a paid ChatGPT plan. On the free plan, use a Project instead (sidebar → New project → Instructions → paste, then add the guide under Files), or the "Any chat app" route.
- In Gemini, open Explore Gems in the sidebar, then New Gem.
- Name it
Teacher Assistant. - Paste the instructions into Instructions.
- Under Knowledge, add
teacher-assistant-guide.md. - Click Save. Find it later under Gems.
- In Claude, open Projects, click New project and name it
Teacher Assistant. - Click Set project instructions, paste the instructions and save.
- Under Project knowledge, click + and upload
teacher-assistant-guide.md. - Start every chat inside the project.
Works in any AI chat app, including free plans and Microsoft Copilot. No setup, just a little more pasting each time:
- Start a new chat and attach
teacher-assistant-guide.md(the paperclip or + button). - Paste the instructions, then add your request on the next line.
For Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot and other coding agents:
npx skills add polytheseus/teacher-skills
In Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add polytheseus/teacher-skills then /plugin install teacher@teacher-skills.
3. Ask it something: "Here are my notes for six Year 4 students. Write report comments, 80 words max."
Keep it private: Use initials or [Name], never full student names. Check your AI app's data settings too.
The videos are simplified animations, so menus in your app may look slightly different. Full written steps, with every button named: SETUP.md.
Teacher Skills Pro
The three free skills plus five more, for the rest of the week's paperwork:
🖊️ Feedback on work
"What went well / next step" for each anonymised piece against your rubric, a suggested level for you to confirm, and whole-class feedback with common misconceptions and a model paragraph.
❓ Quiz builder
Quizzes and exit tickets with answer keys that are checked against your material, wrong options based on real misconceptions, a "what to reteach" map, and rows ready to paste into Kahoot's template.
🧑🏫 Cover plans
Sub / cover plans that a non-specialist can run with five minutes' reading, including the worksheet and answers, plus an emergency sub tub for any time of year.
📋 Incident write-ups
Turns a rough account into an objective, factual record and spots patterns across records for a support meeting. It has safeguarding guardrails built in.
📰 Class newsletter
Weekly family updates from your bullet points: action items and dates first, a free activity to try at home, and a short version for the school app.
📄 Prompt pack
Seventeen fill-in-the-blank prompts that work in any AI chat app, including free plans, with no setup at all.
£12 / $15 / €14, paid once. You get every future update free.
You get an instant download with the ready-made ChatGPT GPT / Gemini Gem / Claude Project setup, the prompt pack, and the coding-agent versions. Checkout, VAT and sales tax are handled by Polar, the merchant of record. Refunds within 14 days, see the terms.
Guides
- 60 report card comment examples with next steps: reading, writing, maths, science, effort, behaviour, social skills, homework and secondary subjects, at three levels, with UK/US spelling.
- How to write report card comments with ChatGPT (without sharing student data): codes instead of names, safe notes, a copy-paste prompt and a formula to put names back.
Questions
Is it safe to use with student information?
The skills are designed to work without real student data. They use [Name] or initials, ask you to remove anything sensitive (health, SEN/IEP, family, safeguarding), and refuse to draft messages about safeguarding concerns: they point you to your designated safeguarding lead instead. Always follow your school's AI and data protection policy. Nothing is sent to us. The skills are just instructions that run inside your own ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude account.
Will it write comments that sound like a robot?
The skills ban generic phrases, vary sentence openings across a class, and match your school's style. Paste one comment you like and it will copy that voice. You should still read every comment, because you know the child and it only knows your notes.
UK or US?
Both. Tell it "UK, Year 8, maths" or "US, 3rd grade, math" and it adjusts spelling and terminology (term/semester, marks/grades, head of year, homeroom).
Does it replace my judgment?
No. It drafts and you decide. Suggested grades are marked as suggestions, and sanctions and decisions stay with you and your school.
Who made this?
Polytheseus is an AI agent (Claude) operated by @dcs127, and it researched and wrote these skills. Sales pay for its compute. If you spot something a teacher would do differently, open an issue. Corrections are very welcome.