AI on LearnCoding

What AI is used for here

LearnCoding uses AI in two separate places. They are genuinely different tools, and it is worth knowing which one you are looking at:

What it is Who sees it
Penny, the help assistant A chat bubble you ask questions Everyone signed in, once an administrator turns it on
The content generator A tool that drafts lesson content for an instructor to review Instructors, inside the lesson builder

That is the whole list. AI does not mark your quizzes, decide your grades, or award your badges; those are ordinary rules in the software, not judgement calls by a model.

Penny, the help assistant

A round chat icon in the bottom-right corner of every page you are signed into. Penny answers:

  • "How do I…" questions about LearnCoding, using the written guides for your role, the same ones you can browse under Docs. She names the page she used, so you can go read it in full.
  • Questions about the lesson you are reading, when you have one open, including the quizzes on that page.

She answers from what she has actually been given. If neither the guides nor your lesson cover your question, she says so and points you at the docs rather than inventing an answer.

Full details, including how she handles quizzes: Penny, the AI Help Assistant.

AI-written lesson content

Instructors can have AI draft a version of a lesson, for example, the same explanation in another programming language or another spoken language. This is a drafting aid, not an autopilot: nothing generated is published until an instructor has reviewed and saved it, and the system records that a piece of content came from AI.

This is not just convention: the server refuses it. Content still carrying an unreviewed AI-generated variant can be saved as a private draft, but cannot go live, be submitted for approval, or be approved, until its author has accepted or rejected each generated piece. That check sits outside the normal permission system on purpose, so not even an administrator can push unreviewed AI content live.

As a student you never operate this. It is mentioned here so that "was this page written by a human?" has an honest answer: a person decided it was correct and published it, and AI may have written the first draft.

Do I need my own API key?

No. If your administrator has set up a shared key, everything works with no setup from you, and that is worth understanding, because it is the default situation:

  • You can never see the shared key. It is stored encrypted and is never sent to your browser. Nobody can read it back, including administrators.
  • But you are using it. Every question you ask goes through it until you save a key of your own. You are spending your institution's quota, not your own, which is fine, it is there for exactly that, but it is why a shared key can run out and why your administrator may limit which models are available.
  • Your own key changes only who pays. Saving one means your questions use your quota instead. It does not unlock anything a shared key cannot do (except choosing models your administrator has not approved, see below).

Penny's settings pane tells you which one is in use right now, and on an empty conversation Penny says it up front: "Penny is using your school's shared AI key", with a link to use your own instead.

If you decide to get your own key, the How to get a free API key button in Penny (and How to get an API key on your Profile under AI keys) opens a guide to the free and paid options.

Unless your administrator requires your group to bring its own key. An administrator can reserve the shared key for some groups, for example instructors only. If yours is not one of them, you will see a notice in Penny ("Your administrator requires students to use their own AI API key...") and on Profile > AI keys, and AI features will not work until you add a key. Open Penny's settings (the gear icon), pick a provider and model, paste your API key for that provider, and save. Your key is then used for Penny, the lesson chatbot and anything else AI-powered you can use.

You may use your own key with an AI provider, for example, if you have your own account and quota and would rather spend that. If you do, open Penny, click the gear icon, and you can:

  • choose which provider she uses, from those your administrator has enabled;
  • choose the model;
  • save your API key (stored encrypted, see below);
  • fetch models, once your own key is saved, to see everything that key can run and tick the ones you want in your dropdown.

Your choices come first. What your administrator has configured is the fallback for anything you have not chosen. Two buttons that sound similar but are not: Use the default hands the choice back to your administrator and keeps your key; Remove key deletes your key and keeps your provider/model choice.

Your Profile page has the same key manager plus a "Test key" button.

What gets sent, and to whom

When you ask Penny something, this is sent to the AI provider in use, your own, if you saved a key, otherwise the one your school configured:

  • your question, and the recent back-and-forth of that conversation;
  • the documentation pages relevant to it;
  • if you are in a lesson: that lesson's content in the language and options you currently have selected, and the quizzes on the page.

Your key is stored encrypted, and nobody else can read it: not other students, not instructors, not administrators. They can see that you have one configured; they cannot see or use it.

Conversations are stored in your own browser, not on the server, which is why clearing a conversation only affects you and why a different browser starts fresh. What is recorded on the server is an operational log line (who asked, on which page, which provider answered) and deliberately not your question, the answer, or your key.

What AI here will not do

  • It will not give you quiz answers. This is not a rule Penny has been asked to follow; she is never given them. Correct options, the hidden tests behind a coding exercise, and instructors' reference solutions are all removed before anything reaches her, exactly as they are removed before the quiz reaches your browser. Ask "which one is right?" and you will get an offer to work it out together, because that is genuinely all she can do.
  • It will not answer from outside LearnCoding. No general web knowledge, no other courses.
  • It will not mark your work or change your grades.
  • It will not act for you: it cannot enrol you, submit a quiz, or change your account.

Turning it off, and who decides

Several switches sit above you, which is why a classmate may see something you do not:

  • your administrator turns the help assistant on or off for the whole site, and decides which AI providers and models are available;
  • your administrator can also switch off whether lesson content may be used to answer questions;
  • an instructor can turn AI off for their own course, and then that course's content is never sent to an AI provider by anyone.

If you see no chat bubble at all, one of those switches is off, not a fault on your side.

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