Claude Tutor

Learn the notes and PDFs in your vault with the Feynman technique. Your tutor is Clawd, a pixel tutor in glasses. You explain an idea in plain words; Clawd finds what's missing, wrong or hidden behind jargon, re-teaches just that, and quizzes you until it sticks. Claude runs through your Claude Code login, so your Pro/Max subscription works and you don't need an API key.

What it does:

• Explain: Feynman loop with a score, what you nailed, gaps (missing / wrong / jargon / vague), targeted re-teaching, an analogy, prerequisite drill-down, hints and "I'm stuck".
• Quiz: multiple choice (keys 1–4), short answer, explain-why and spot-the-error questions, with a confidence rating (keys G / U / C). Wrong answers get a diagnosed misconception, a mini-lesson and a new check question.
• Composers: Enter sends, Shift+Enter adds a line, Esc cancels a reply that's taking too long. Unsent explanations survive closing the view.
• Ask Clawd at any point, spaced repetition (SM-2) per concept, and a Mistakes log that quizzes keep targeting.
• PDFs: text extraction (poppler pdftotext, falling back to Obsidian's built-in pdf.js), long PDFs split into page ranges, and page citations. Scanned PDFs are listed as unreadable.
• Math: Claude writes all formulae as LaTeX ($…$, $$…$$), and everything is rendered with Obsidian's own Markdown renderer and MathJax, including quiz options, gaps and fixes. Formulas garbled by PDF extraction are written back as LaTeX.
• Clawd has 10 moods, follows your cursor, and falls asleep when you leave.

What's different in Obsidian

• The library is your vault. On first run you pick study folders, and you can change them in settings. Right-click any note → Quiz me on this / Explain it to Clawd to study a single note.
• Notes stay in sync. Clawd never reads a note you haven't picked: after adding a folder, you tick the notes you want read on the Today tab. Notes it has already read are re-read in the background after you edit them (can be turned off), and renames keep your progress. Before re-reading many notes at once (25 by default), Clawd asks first, since each one is a Claude request.
• Notes open in Obsidian. Clicking a source opens the real note, or the PDF at its page, in a new tab.
• It looks like your theme. Colours, fonts and light/dark mode follow Obsidian.
• Shortcuts stay in the tutor tab. They only work while it's focused, so they don't clash with your hotkeys.

Requirements

• Obsidian desktop 1.13+ (the plugin is desktop-only, because it runs the claude CLI). On Obsidian 1.8.7–1.12, Obsidian installs version 0.1.3 automatically.
• Claude Code installed and logged in. Run claude once in a terminal to sign in. The plugin finds it in the usual places (~/.local/bin, Homebrew, /usr/local/bin); if it doesn't, set the path in settings.
• Optional: poppler (pdftotext) for the best PDF text.

Install

Once it's listed in Obsidian's community plugins: Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Claude Tutor, install and enable it.

Until then, download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/claude-tutor/, then enable it under Settings → Community plugins.

From source

npm install
npm run build                     # type-checks, then writes main.js
VAULT="/path/to/your/vault"
mkdir -p "$VAULT/.obsidian/plugins/claude-tutor"
cp main.js manifest.json styles.css "$VAULT/.obsidian/plugins/claude-tutor/"

Then in Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → turn on community plugins → enable Claude Tutor, and click the Clawd icon in the ribbon (or run the Claude Tutor: Open command).

For development, symlink the folder instead and run npm run dev to rebuild on save.

Commands

Data

All data stays in the plugin folder (.obsidian/plugins/claude-tutor/):

• data.json: settings.
• progress.json: concepts, scheduling, attempts and misconceptions. It's written atomically, and a backup is kept if the file can't be read.
• pdf-cache/: extracted PDF text.

In your vault, the plugin only writes notes you ask for: Teach → Save as note creates a note in Claude Tutor/Lessons/ (configurable).

Nothing is sent anywhere except to Claude, through your own claude CLI: one request per note read, and one per answer graded.

Disclosures

• Requires an Anthropic account. Claude Tutor talks to Claude through Claude Code, which needs a Claude subscription (Pro/Max) or API billing. Requests count against your plan's usage.
• Runs an external program. The plugin starts your locally installed claude CLI (and pdftotext, if installed) as child processes, passing them your environment with common install folders added to PATH so they can be found when Obsidian is launched from the dock. That's why it's desktop-only.
• Filesystem access outside the vault API. It checks the usual install locations for the claude binary, and replaces progress.json with an atomic rename so a crash can't leave it half-written. It doesn't read or write anything else outside your vault.
• Network use. Note text, your answers and any images you attach are sent to Anthropic by the claude CLI, to evaluate explanations, write quizzes and reply. The plugin itself makes no other network requests and has no telemetry.
• Lists your vault's files. To find notes in your study folders, and to offer notes and folders in the Add note or PDF / Add folder pickers, the plugin lists the files in your vault. It only reads the contents of notes in your study folders (or notes you add one by one).
• Verifiable releases. Release files are built by GitHub Actions from this repository and carry build provenance attestations; check one with gh attestation verify main.js -R wanikhawar/claude-tutor.
• Not affiliated with Anthropic. This is an independent, community plugin.

Development

npm install
npm run build                                   # type-checks, then writes main.js
npm test                                        # core unit tests (notes, PDF reflow/split, SRS, progress)
CLAUDE_LIVE=1 npx vitest run tests/live.test.ts # live test against Claude (Haiku): checks LaTeX output
npm run dev                                     # rebuild main.js on change