AI Literacy Companions

An interactive Shiny app that teaches fundamental skills for working with AI through a cast of animal characters. Each character focuses on one discipline — from deciding whether to use AI at all, to crafting effective prompts, to evaluating the results.

Live Demo

Visit the deployed app: https://n8-layman.shinyapps.io/promptulus/

Characters

The companions are organized into three workflow phases:

Before AI: Planning

Character	Animal	Skill
Sequita	Squirrel	When to Use AI — assesses whether your task needs transparency and auditability, or whether a good answer is all that matters
Modulus	Crab	Task Decomposition — breaks complex tasks into smaller, modular pieces that AI can handle well

During AI: The Four I's

Character	Animal	Skill
Telosa	Turtle	Intent Engineering — helps you define clear goals, accountability, and escape hatches
Promptulus	Owl	Prompt Engineering — reviews and improves your prompts using proven principles
Mnemos	Elephant	Context Engineering — teaches what context to provide (and what to leave out)
Dialogos	Parrot	Conversation Management — guides multi-turn interactions (coming soon)

After AI: Quality & Reporting

Character	Animal	Skill
Veridex	Raccoon	Evaluation — teaches how to assess AI outputs (coming soon)
Lucerna	Firefly	Reporting — helps communicate AI-assisted work (coming soon)

Octavius the Octopus serves as the landing page mascot, introducing the full workflow.

Features

• Interactive Learning: Submit task descriptions or prompts and get character-specific feedback
• Transparency Spectrum: Sequita assesses tasks on a high-to-low transparency scale with visual indicator
• Principle-Based Teaching: Each character draws from a curated set of principles, varying recommendations to expose different dimensions
• Cross-Character References: Characters suggest when to visit other companions for complementary skills
• Giscus Discussions: Per-character discussion threads for community feedback

Local Development

Prerequisites

• R (version 4.0 or higher)
• RStudio (recommended)

Setup

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/nate-layman/promptulus.git
   cd promptulus

2. Get a free Gemini API key

   • Visit Google AI Studio
   • Click "Create API Key"
   • Copy your API key

3. Set up your environment

   Create app/.Renviron:

   GEMINI_API_KEY=your_actual_api_key_here
   

   Or enter your key directly in the app's landing page.

4. Install R dependencies

   # Using renv (recommended)
   renv::restore()
   
   # Or manually
   install.packages(c("shiny", "shinyjs", "bslib", "ellmer", "here", "rsconnect"))

5. Run the app

   shiny::runApp("app")

Deployment to shinyapps.io

rsconnect::deployApp(appDir = "app", appName = "promptulus")

See shinyapps.io for account setup. The free tier includes 25 active hours/month.

Project Structure

promptulus/
├── app/
│   ├── app.R                              # Main Shiny application
│   ├── sequita_system_prompt.md           # Sequita (transparency assessment)
│   ├── task_categorization_principles.md  # Transparency principles
│   ├── task_classification_rubric.md      # Transparency rubric
│   ├── telosa_system_prompt.md            # Telosa (intent engineering)
│   ├── intent_engineering_principles.md   # Intent principles
│   ├── promptulus_system_prompt.md        # Promptulus (prompt engineering)
│   ├── prompting_principles.md            # Prompting principles
│   ├── modulus_system_prompt.md           # Modulus (task decomposition)
│   ├── modularization_principles.md       # Modularization principles
│   └── www/                               # Character artwork
│       ├── octopus.png                    # Landing page mascot
│       ├── squirrel.png, squirrel_gear.png
│       ├── crab.png, crab_gear.png
│       ├── turtle.png, turtle_gear.png
│       └── owl.png, owl_gear.png
├── notes/                                 # Design documentation
│   ├── AI_literacy_companions.md          # Character roster and design notes
│   └── ...
├── renv.lock                              # R dependency lockfile
└── README.md

Technologies

• Shiny + bslib: R framework for web applications
• ellmer: R package for LLM interactions (Google Gemini)
• Google Gemini: Free-tier LLM API (Gemini 2.5 Flash)
• shinyapps.io: Hosting with secure environment variables

Cost

Uses Google Gemini's free tier: 15 requests/minute, 1,500 requests/day.

Contributing

Contributions welcome! See Issues for current plans.

License

[Add your license here]