I Built an AI Coding Tutor That Refuses to Give You the Answer

I had a problem with AI coding assistants.

They were too helpful.

Ask for a hint on a coding problem, and five seconds later you have the approach, the optimized solution, and half the reason you opened the problem in the first place.

I wanted something that would help me think without doing the thinking for me.

So I built Think Before Code.

The idea is simple: instead of racing to the answer, the AI asks what you’ve tried, challenges your reasoning, and gives the smallest useful hint.

Basically, less answer machine.

More:

“Okay, but why?”

I’m still building it and figuring out what actually makes AI useful for learning.

If you’re curious:

👉 Think Before Code on GitHub

More thoughts on the design later. For now, I just wanted to put the idea out there. 🦆