Safety and academic integrity
Sprig is designed to help a student do their own thinking, not to supply work they can turn in as theirs.
What the reviewer refuses to do
On every feedback turn, Sprig refuses four things: stating a specific answer or conclusion; rewriting or completing the student’s work; walking through solution steps using the student’s own numbers, text, or code; and confirming whether a specific guess is correct.
If a student asks for an answer, including after a previous refusal, the reviewer declines and redirects them to a question or a concept to investigate. It does not grade, score, or give pass/fail judgments.
Why feedback is limited to one place at a time
Initial feedback can consider a submitted draft. After that, a follow-up thread receives only that comment’s saved excerpt or image crop and the conversation in that thread—not the whole submission or other comment threads. This keeps a follow-up focused and prevents a thread from accumulating the complete work.
Each comment allows up to five follow-ups. The limit is a teaching boundary: after a few exchanges, revising the work is more useful than extending a negotiation about it.
What Sprig does instead
It asks a question about reasoning, evidence, or a meaningful edge case, or points to a concept or technique worth learning. The aim is to make the next revision clearer while leaving the student responsible for the answer.
These guardrails are backed by the reviewer’s operating rules and scoped comment design. They still need ongoing live-model checks when the reviewer changes.