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About this tool
Build an AI tutor prompt that guides with questions and a graded hint ladder instead of handing over the answer.
The Socratic Tutor Prompt Builder creates an AI tutoring prompt that teaches by asking one guiding question per turn instead of stating answers. Its questioning moves come from Richard Paul's six-category taxonomy of Socratic questions, and stuck students are helped through a graded 2-5 rung hint ladder that escalates one step at a time. Parents, teachers and self-learners get a tutor that builds reasoning rather than dependence.
Open Socratic Tutor Prompt Builder on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
The prompt forbids lectures and multi-part questions, keeping the student doing the thinking.
Help escalates rung by rung — from a focusing question to naming the concept to one worked step — never jumping straight to the answer.
Questions draw on the six classic Socratic categories: clarification, assumptions, evidence, viewpoints, implications and meta-questions.
Socratic questioning teaches by asking structured questions that lead a student to construct the answer themselves, rather than being told it. This tool encodes Richard Paul's widely used taxonomy of six question categories — clarification, probing assumptions, reasons and evidence, viewpoints, implications, and questions about the question — directly into the prompt.
The hint ladder is a fixed escalation sequence of 2 to 5 rungs the AI must climb one step at a time when a student is stuck: first a focusing question, then naming the relevant concept, then a structural nudge, then an analogous worked example, and finally one intermediate step. The AI may only escalate after "I don't know", two wrong attempts in a row, or a direct request for the answer.
That is your choice. With reveal allowed, the AI may walk through the full solution only after every hint rung is used, and must immediately pose a similar practice problem. With reveal disabled, it never shows the solution and instead suggests a break or a prerequisite topic.
The prompt adapts wording to four levels: primary/middle school, high school, undergraduate and adult self-learners. It is an informational study aid — it does not replace a qualified teacher, and generated guidance should be sanity-checked for advanced or high-stakes material.