Captain's Log 001 — Why AmaQuiz
Captain's Log, Entry 001.
I'm building a thing. It's called AmaQuiz — "I'm a gonna quiz you!"
The problem
I wanted my Grade 11 son to practise maths and reading regularly. Not cramming before exams. Not "let me open that app I downloaded three months ago." Just consistent, short retrieval practice — the kind that actually builds durable knowledge.
But here's the thing: learning apps require you to remember to open them. That's the friction that kills every good intention. Duolingo solved this with aggressive notifications. I wanted to solve it differently.
What if the quiz came to you, in the chat app you already use?
The idea
AmaQuiz is a messaging-first knowledge retention engine. It delivers short, adaptive quiz workouts — about 2 to 5 minutes — through WhatsApp and Telegram. No app to install. No login to remember. You just answer.
Three layers of AI value:
- Generate — AI creates questions from source material you trust
- Track — the system remembers what you know and what you don't
- Identify — it surfaces your blind spots so you focus on what matters
But — and this is a deliberate design decision — scoring is deterministic and server-side. AI generates and explains. It does not mark. A correct answer is never at the mercy of a language model's judgement.
The mantra
Quiz. Learn. Repeat. 🔥
That's the product loop in three words. You get quizzed. You learn from the feedback. You do it again tomorrow. Knowledge compounds.
Where I am
As of today, AmaQuiz is working. Not "working on paper" — working in production:
- WhatsApp and Telegram delivery, both live
- AI-powered Quiz Master agent (Strands Agents on Amazon Bedrock)
- Deterministic scoring engine
- Session persistence per learner
- EventBridge-based architecture — adding a new channel required zero agent changes
- Deployed to AWS with Terraform, least-privilege IAM, the works
- Two content packs ("cartridges") with 17 questions
It's ugly. It's early. But it works. Quiz. Learn. Repeat.
What this log is
I'm going to build AmaQuiz in public. Not a polished "how-to" series. A raw build log — what I shipped, what broke, what I learned, and the real numbers behind it.
I've tried "content series" before. They fizzle. This is different: I'm already documenting every build session in detail for my own continuity. The Captain's Log is just the public-facing extract.
The build is the content.
Let's go.
AmaQuiz — Quiz. Learn. Repeat. 🔥
