Dan is an ethical, conversational AI assistant that helps students brainstorm, organize, and refine authentic college essays, without writing them for students.

🔗 dan.haloway.co

Dan is a human-centered AI coach built into the Haloway college essay platform. Unlike typical AI generators, Dan is grounded in academic integrity, offering structured guidance without generating full essay responses. Whether it’s the Common App personal statement or UC PIQs, Dan helps students develop and articulate their ideas while keeping the writing process entirely their own.

• Prompt Recognition
  Automatically identifies essay types (e.g., UC PIQs, Common App) and adjusts coaching strategies..

• Conversational Brainstorming
  Uses Socratic-style questioning to prompt self-reflection and help students uncover compelling personal stories..

• Outline Assistance
  Guides students in organizing ideas into a structured, authentic essay outline..

• Ethical Guardrails
  Never writes for the student—emphasizes originality, student ownership, and transparency..

• Phase-Based Coaching
  Five-phase model::
  1. Prompt Analysis → 2. Idea Generation → 3. Outline Building → 4. Refining → 5. Polishing

Dan is based on the Vercel AI Chat-SDK Template. Follow these steps to run the app locally:

git clone https://github.com/CometBlazer/essay-brainstormer-v1.git

cd essay-brainstormer-v1
npm install
npm run devev

Make sure you make a copy of .env.example and set up your API keys.

• Ethical AI Design
  Balancing usefulness with integrity—no essay writing, only coaching..

• Prompt Engineering
  Carefully designed prompt templates to maximize reflection, not completion..