AI Authoring

AI Authoring lets administrators and instructors draft courses and quiz questions with AI, right inside the builders they already use. AI is an assistant: it proposes, you review, and everything it creates is saved as a draft for you to approve. Nothing is ever published or deleted automatically.

What you can do

• Generate a course curriculum from a short brief, on the course builder.
• Generate quiz questions from a topic, on the quiz editor.
• Add more or refine with instructions ("add a section on advanced topics", "focus on real-world scenarios") - the AI is aware of what the course or quiz already has and adds complementary content instead of repeating it.
• Summarize reports in plain language.
• Govern usage with per-instructor limits, a site-wide cap, and a usage panel.

AI Authoring is available to administrators (in wp-admin) and instructors (on the front-end builder). Students never see it.

Before you start: connect a provider

AI Authoring runs on the AI provider you connect once in WordPress core under Settings > Connectors. The API key is stored by WordPress and shared across every plugin - Learnomy never stores it.

Open Learnomy → Settings → AI authoring. The Connection card shows whether a provider is connected and links straight to where to fix it if not.

• Connected and ready to use (green): you are set.
• Not connected yet (amber): click Go to Settings > Connectors, add a provider key, then come back.

Use Test AI connection to send one tiny prompt and confirm the provider and model actually work. If your provider's newest model is not available on your account, the test shows the exact error - set a Model (a balanced model such as a Haiku- or Sonnet-class model is the right choice for text authoring) and test again.

Turn it on and choose who can use it

On the same AI authoring tab:

1. Enable AI authoring.
2. Who can use it - Administrators are always allowed; tick Instructors to let them use it too.
3. Draft-first - leave on so AI content is always created as drafts (recommended).

Generate a course curriculum

Open a course in the builder (admins: Learnomy → Courses → Course Builder; instructors: the front-end course builder) and go to the Curriculum step. Click Generate with AI.

1. Describe the course (topic, who it is for, how many sections). Add Instructions to steer focus, depth, or what to add.
2. Click Suggest an outline. AI proposes a curriculum - nothing is written yet.
3. Review it and remove anything you do not want.
4. Click Generate draft curriculum. Each section and lesson is created as a draft, with a starter lesson body you can edit.
5. The builder reloads so you can review the new drafts.

It only adds. Generating into a course that already has content adds complementary sections as drafts - it never changes or removes what is already there.

Generate quiz questions

Open a quiz in the editor (admins: Learnomy → Quizzes → edit a quiz; instructors: the front-end quiz editor) and click Generate questions with AI.

1. Set the topic (it is pre-filled from the quiz title), how many questions, and which question types. Add Instructions to steer difficulty or style.
2. Click Suggest questions. AI drafts them for review - nothing is added yet.
3. Review each question (stem and options, with the correct answer marked) and remove any you do not want.
4. Click Add to quiz. The questions are created as drafts and added to this quiz.

Running it again returns new questions - the AI knows which questions the quiz already has and will not repeat them.

Usage limits and governance

The AI provider is billed to you, so you control how much instructors can use. On Learnomy → Settings → AI authoring → Usage limits:

• Generations per instructor / month - the default monthly allowance (0 = unlimited).
• Site-wide monthly cap - a ceiling across all instructors (0 = no ceiling). Administrators are never limited.
• Per-request caps - the most questions per generate and lessons per outline, so a single call cannot drain your budget.
• Rate limit - requests per minute per user, to guard against runaway loops.
• Actions instructors may run - which AI actions are available to instructors.
• When an instructor hits their limit:
  • Stop them (recommended) - they see a clear message and cannot generate more until you raise their limit.
  • Let them continue, but flag it - generation still works and the instructor is flagged Over limit in the usage list, so you decide what to do.

The usage panel

The AI usage this month panel shows the site total versus your cap, and every instructor's usage with a per-row monthly limit and an OK / Near limit / Over limit status. Set an instructor's limit inline (blank uses the default, 0 blocks them), then click Save limits.

How it stays safe and consistent

• Draft-first - AI content is created as drafts; you approve before anything goes live.
• Additive - the wizards add content; they never delete or overwrite existing courses, lessons, or questions.
• Same as hand-authored - AI writes through the same internal authoring path as the manual editors, so AI-created content behaves identically and shows up consistently on the front end, in wp-admin, and over the API.
• Permission-scoped - instructors can only generate into their own courses and quizzes; administrators can manage all.

For developers

AI generation is exposed under the learnomy-pro/v1 REST namespace (admin / allowed-instructor only): POST /ai/propose-outline, POST /ai/generate-course, POST /ai/propose-questions, POST /ai/generate-questions, POST /ai/summarize-report, and the admin-only read-only GET /ai/usage.

Useful hooks:

• learnomy_pro_ai_request_timeout (filter) - HTTP timeout in seconds for AI calls (default 60).
• learnomy_pro_ai_generate_text (filter) - short-circuit the model call (return a string) to inject a custom transport or a test response.
• learnomy_pro_ai_overage (action) - fires when an instructor generates past a limit under "Let them continue" mode ($user_id, $kind, $used, $limit); hook it to email or Slack your admins.