How Plumi works

Plumi is a notebook first. You open it, pick a pen, and write on ruled or squared paper with your Apple Pencil — the same way you would in Goodnotes or Notability, or on paper.

There is no separate “ask the tutor” mode to switch into, and nothing to photograph. The work you would have done anyway is the input.

Handwritten maths is not handwritten prose. A line of working carries fractions, indices, integral signs, substitutions and crossings-out, and the order they were written in matters as much as the symbols themselves.

Plumi reads that structure. It is looking at the method you used to get somewhere, which is the part a photograph of a final answer throws away — and the part your exam marks actually come from.

When you get stuck, Plumi writes beside your work rather than replacing it. Its first move is a question, not a solution: on the capture below it asks what the derivative of e to the 2x is, because the student had dropped the factor of one half.

You keep the pen. You answer in your own handwriting, and Plumi responds to what you wrote. If you want the answer outright you can have it, but that is not where it starts — being handed a worked solution is how you end up recognising a method without being able to produce one.

Every piece of marked work updates a picture of your course: which topics you have demonstrated, which you have only read about, and which keep costing you marks.

Notes alone do not count. Writing a page on electrical circuits makes the topic seen; getting circuit questions right is what makes it secure. That distinction is the whole point — it is why Plumi can open on one honest recommendation instead of a list of everything you have ever touched.

• Topics you have proved you can do are left alone.
• Topics you got wrong come back as short, targeted sets.
• Start a Focus session and the apps that usually win go quiet until you are done.