socrates.guru · A Socratic AI tutor

Learn anything by talking it through.

No videos. No tests. Just a patient AI guru who asks the right questions, notices what you really understand, and keeps you moving through even the hardest subjects.

  • Any subject, or your own syllabus
  • Tracks what you understand, topic by topic
  • Picks up exactly where you left off
  • Checks that it sticks, days and weeks later
  • Built for classrooms, with tools for teachers
Physics · Newton's Third Law

Let's start with what you already know. Have you heard of Newton's third law? What does it say, in your own words?

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction? Like if I push on a wall, it pushes back on me.

That's the famous line, and the wall is a good example. Let's test it. A horse pulls a cart forward, and the cart pulls back on the horse just as hard. So how does anything ever move?

Because the horse pulls a little harder than the cart pulls back?

Tempting, but the third law says the pair is always exactly equal:

Look at the labels. Which object does each force act on?

Oh. They act on different objects. So for the cart I only add up forces on the cart.

The tutor noticed: Conceptual understanding
Concept → Can explain
Explained in their own words why the pair doesn't cancel: the two forces act on different objects.

Exactly. Now use it. The horse pulls the cart forward with 500 N, friction pushes back on the cart with 300 N, and the cart's mass is 100 kg. What is the cart's acceleration?

Forces on the cart: 500 N - 300 N = 200 N forward. Then a = F / m = 200 / 100 = 2 m/s².

The tutor noticed: Procedural understanding
Procedure → Attempted · 1 of 3 toward Basic
Picked the forces on the right object and solved it with no help. Two more like it in a row and procedure reaches Basic.
Try it yourself: ask Socrates a question, no account needed →
What makes it different

Knowing why and knowing how are two different things

Researchers call them conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge. You can have either one without the other, so the tutor tracks them separately.

Knowing why

Conceptual understanding

Why it works and how the ideas connect. Knowing that a derivative is a rate of change, or that action-reaction forces act on different objects.

When it's missing: "I can do the problems, but I don't really know why."

Knowing how

Procedural understanding

Carrying out a method correctly and fluently. Applying the chain rule, balancing a chemical equation, solving for an unknown force.

When it's missing: "I get the idea, but I keep messing up the steps."

The tutor tracks both, separately, on every topic you touch. That is what lit up in the conversation above. How it tracks them →

Questions

Frequently asked

Why socrates.guru?

Socrates taught by asking questions until people found the answer themselves, and a guru is a teacher who leads you out of confusion. Put together, that is what this is: an AI tutor that teaches the way Socrates did. It asks, listens to how you think, and only moves on when you really understand.

Are there really no videos or tests?

None. Watching someone explain something is not the same as understanding it, and a test only measures one moment. Here, the conversation is both the teaching and the assessment. The closest thing to a test is a memory check-in: a couple of questions on something you already learned, to see whether it lasted. It is never graded.

What if I know nothing about a subject?

That's fine. Questions can't teach you facts you've never heard, so the tutor starts by finding out what you already know. Then it explains new material in short pieces, a paragraph or two at a time, each ending with a question that gets you thinking with what you just learned. As you catch on, it explains less and asks more.

What subjects can I learn?

Almost anything that can be learned through reasoning and explanation: math, physics, chemistry, biology, programming, history, economics, philosophy, and more. In fact-heavy subjects like history, the tutor tells you the story in short pieces, then asks you to reason about causes, motives, and evidence. If nobody has asked for a subject yet, it gets designed when you ask.

I'm a teacher. Can I use this with my class?

Yes. Create a class, pick or design the subject, choose the topics and due dates, and share the join code. You can paste your own practice problems for the whole class. You get a dashboard of the whole class, alerts about who needs attention, and printable talking points for each class meeting. Students learn with the same tutor either way.

Is there a limit on how much I can use it?

Each plan includes a certain amount of tutoring per study session and per week, and your Account page shows how much is left. When you reach it, the chat pauses and shows when your next session starts. Nothing you typed is lost, and you get a heads-up before it happens.

What do you want to understand?

Pick a subject, and your guru has the first question ready. Or ask it something first, no account needed.