Living Earth Quiz

75 minutes. One context window. A full quiz app.

Why I Built This

My daughter had her 9th-grade Living Earth biology final coming up and was stressing over it. I wanted to help her study, but not with flashcards or a boring textbook review. Something playful. Something that might actually make her laugh while she learned.

I didn't want to spend too much time on it. The approach: one session with Claude Code, no breaks, ship something real.

How It Works

Content generation. I used Claude to research the CA NGSS Living Earth curriculum and generate 200 biology questions across 5 units: Ecology, Cells, Genetics, Evolution, and Climate. No public question banks existed, so everything was generated fresh. The output was a Markdown file with questions and correct answers marked.

Teen slang feedback. Instead of "Correct!" or "Try again," the app speaks in teenage slang. I had Claude research current teen vernacular and generate 80 responses: 40 for correct answers, 40 for incorrect. The output was another Markdown file, split by right and wrong.

• Right answer: "You absolutely ATE that! No crumbs left!"
• Wrong answer: "That answer was sus and science caught it in 4K."

The goal was to make studying feel less like work.

Forgiving gamification. A "Brain Power" meter that only goes up. Streak celebrations with confetti. No punishment for wrong answers, just encouragement and the explanation.

Tradeoffs I Made

• Fun over comprehensive: This isn't a full study system. It's a vibe. A way to review while laughing.
• Speed over polish: 75 minutes meant shipping with rough edges. The core loop works; the details can wait.

Key decision: mobile-first and dark mode. Kids are on their phones. Built what a teenager would actually use, not what looks good in a demo.

What I'm Tracking

Primary metric is usage. Did she actually open it and study?

Secondary is engagement: streaks, shares, whether the slang lands.

Here's what I learned: driving usage is harder than I expected. Just suggesting "here's a quiz I made for you" was enough friction to put a teenager off. The reward (the slang) comes after you answer, which might be too late in the loop. The motivation has to come before the effort, not after.

I don't have a fix yet. Still thinking about it.

Tech Stack

• React 18 + Vite
• Tailwind CSS (glassmorphism, dark mode)
• Framer Motion (animations)
• Canvas Confetti
• LocalStorage for persistence

Where It's At

Live at quiz-nu-ten-22.vercel.app. The exam is next week. We'll see if it helped.

The bigger lesson: building fast with AI is real. 75 minutes from zero to deployed. But making someone actually use what you built? That's the hard part. Always has been.