Syzito — reasoning together in academic writing
Process-aware academic writing platform where students, teachers, and AI reason through the writing together — not just at milestones and the final draft. Currently shipping as the Writey Thing prototype at writeything.benjaminloschen.com.
The name
Syzito comes from the Greek verb syzētō — syn (together) + zēteō (to seek, inquire). In classical usage it means "to examine together, discuss, investigate, reason together," not just casually talk. That's the product thesis: not producing a finished essay, but seeing and supporting the joint process of inquiry between student, teacher, and AI.
The problem it solves
•Students hit blank-page pressure and can't see their own revision process
•Teachers only see endpoints — the draft, the rubric, the grade — and miss where thinking actually happens (and where AI participation actually happens)
•Traditional feedback disconnects from observable writing behavior, so interventions are guesses
What's unique
○Process visibility over product focus — reason together through the entire writing process, not just at milestones and the final draft
○Transparent AI participation — the system clearly shows where AI contributes to the shared inquiry, not as a black box
○Evidence-linked interventions — every insight points back to visible writing behavior
○Replayable history — teachers can review the evolution of student thinking chronologically, including typed-vs-pasted and AI-use signals
Product surface (prototype)
Student side:
•Guided drafting with in-flow AI support
•Revision replay showing idea evolution
•Per-session reflection prompts
•Assignment dashboard, student report view
Teacher side:
•Triage dashboard with revision density, typed-vs-pasted ratio, AI-use indicators
•Assignment setup flow with rubric-driven grading + Canvas integration
•Session overview + session review with timeline markers
•Evidence-linked summaries for intervention notes
•Course assignments list, grading review/send modal
Tech stack
•Next.js 16 (App Router) + React 19 + TypeScript + Tailwind v4
•Radix UI + shadcn/ui for primitives; Tiptap 3 for the writing editor (with highlight, placeholder, underline extensions)
•React Hook Form + Zod for forms and validation
•Recharts for triage dashboards
•Driver.js for guided tours of the student/teacher flows
•Vercel Analytics for usage
•Built as a v0 prototype, then taken into a full Next.js app with the design system extracted into a coherent component library
What I'd take to v1
The prototype validates the interaction model — process timeline, evidence-linked review, AI transparency — across both student and teacher flows. A production v1 would add: a real event-sourced data model (the Event Model Spec and Data Model Spec are written), a privacy / governance posture for student data (FERPA + AB-2273 considerations), Canvas/LMS integrations beyond the rubric stub, and an authorship-likelihood analysis surface (drafted in the feature docs).