I want to be upfront about something before we start. Most "getting started with AI" guides are written for tools that don't really know who you are. You open them, type a question, get an answer, close the tab. Repeat tomorrow.
Fennie is built differently, and the onboarding feels different too. So if you've used ChatGPT for homework before and you're expecting that — chat box, blank slate, ask anything — there's an adjustment.
This guide is the walkthrough I wish I'd had during my first week. It covers what to set up, what to skip, and where most students get the most lift.
What Fennie actually is
Fennie isn't a chatbot with a fox logo. It's a small system with seven moving parts:
- Courses — the classes you're taking, with their syllabi
- Calendar — your tests, deadlines, papers, study sessions
- Plan — the daily list Fennie builds for you each morning
- Tasks — the individual things on that plan (read this, quiz that, draft this)
- Notes — markdown notes you take or generate
- Quizzes — short tests pulled from your notes or syllabus
- Flashcards — spaced-repetition decks, also pulled from your material
There's an eighth thing, technically. We call it Memory. It's quiet. It watches what you struggle with, what you skip, what you nailed on the first try, and uses that to shape tomorrow's plan. You won't see a "Memory" tab. It just works in the background.
The whole point is that the parts talk to each other. A test on your calendar reshapes your plan. A note can spawn a quiz in two clicks. The quiz feeds Memory. Memory adjusts what gets surfaced next week.
If you only treat Fennie like a chat tutor, you're using maybe 15% of it.
Day one: set up one course, not all of them
I see a lot of students try to load every class on day one. Don't. Pick the hardest one — the one you're most behind in or most worried about — and set up only that.
Here's what to do:
- Open Fennie and create a new Course.
- Drop in the syllabus PDF. If you don't have one, paste in the topics you're covering this term.
- Add the dates of your big assessments — midterm, final, papers, projects.
That's it. Fennie will read the syllabus, build a topic map for the term, and prep a first-pass plan for tomorrow morning.
The reason to start with one course is simple: you want to actually feel the loop close before you scale it. Set up everything at once and you won't notice when things get good. Set up one, see your plan adapt across a real test, and you'll get the picture.
Day two: actually do the plan
The morning plan is short on purpose. Most days it's three or four items, somewhere between 30 and 90 minutes total. You can ask for more, you can ask for less. But the default is built to be doable on a Tuesday.
A real plan looks something like:
Tuesday, Nov 4
- Review notes: chain rule + product rule (8 min)
- Flashcards: derivative shortcuts deck — 12 cards due (10 min)
- Lesson: implicit differentiation walkthrough (20 min)
- Quiz: derivatives mixed (8 min)
Notice what's not there. No "study harder." No 4-hour block. No motivational banner. Just specific things, with rough time estimates, in an order that makes pedagogical sense.
The trick on day two is to actually do it. Not because Fennie is grading you — it isn't — but because the Memory system needs real data. If you skip the quiz, it can't tell whether you're solid on chain rule or not. The plan tomorrow will be slightly worse. Skip a few days and the plan starts guessing.
How the chat is different
Fennie's chat is not a "ask me anything" panel. It's a tutor that's read your notes, knows what's on your calendar, and is trying to teach you the thing in front of you.
If you ask "what's the answer to problem 7," it usually won't tell you. It'll ask what you tried, where you got stuck, and walk you through the next step. This is on purpose. It frustrated me for a week and then I realized my problem-solving was actually getting better.
What chat is good for, in my experience:
- Working through a problem you're stuck on, with hints not solutions
- Asking "explain this like I'm seeing it for the first time" on a topic from a note
- Bouncing essay outlines around before you commit
- Quick concept clarification — "wait, what's the difference between mitosis and meiosis again?"
What chat is bad for:
- Trying to extract a finished homework answer (it's designed to refuse this)
- Replacing your textbook (use the textbook, then bring questions to chat)
- Long meandering "tell me about history" sessions — go to a search engine
Use the calendar as your honesty check
The single highest-leverage move in your first week is putting your real test dates in the calendar. Not "midterm sometime in November." The actual date. Same for papers, projects, oral exams, lab reports.
Here's why it matters: the moment Fennie sees a test on Friday, it rebalances. Mon-Wed get heavier on that course. Fri afternoon gets a final review. The Saturday after, the plan eases up because you just spent a week on that material.
Without the calendar, the plan is even and well-intentioned but generic. With the calendar, it's a campaign.
Notes are the pivot
Most students underuse notes. They take them in lectures, then never look at them again until finals. In Fennie, notes are also the source for everything else.
Take or paste in a note from today's class. It can be rough — bullet points, half-sentences, equations, whatever. From any note you can:
- Generate a quiz on the content (two clicks)
- Spawn a flashcard deck (two clicks)
- Ask chat to explain any section in plainer terms
- Have Fennie pull connections to other notes you've already taken
The flow I've settled into: take messy notes in class, clean them up that evening (10 minutes), generate a flashcard deck, and let those cards show up in tomorrow's plan. The work is front-loaded but small, and finals week becomes a non-event.
Common first-week mistakes
I've seen these enough times to call them out.
Loading 6 courses on day one. Already covered. Start with one.
Treating the plan as optional. The plan only gets smarter if you do it. Skipping makes Memory's picture of you blurry.
Asking chat for direct answers and getting frustrated when it doesn't comply. Reframe your question. "Walk me through this" works better than "what's the answer."
Not putting tests on the calendar. This is the single biggest "why does my plan feel generic" mistake.
Trying to read every Fennie feature before using any of it. You don't need to. The seven objects make sense once you've used them. Just start.
A realistic two-week timeline
If you set this up the day a course starts, here's roughly what to expect:
Week 1. You're loading a syllabus, taking notes, doing the daily plan, building the first flashcard decks. The plan feels a little generic. Memory hasn't seen enough of you yet to be specific.
Week 2. Plans get noticeably more pointed. Topics you struggled with last week show back up — sometimes in a different form, sometimes as a flashcard, sometimes as a quiz question. The morning plan starts to look like something a tutor who knows you would build.
Week 3 and beyond. You stop thinking about it. You open the app, the plan is there, you do it, you go on with your life.
That's the goal. Not a tool you wrestle with. A study system that quietly compounds.
When AI study tools become a problem
I'd be a worse writer if I left this out.
There's a real difference between a tool that's teaching you and a tool you're laundering work through. Fennie is built around the first one — the chat won't write your essay, the system explicitly works through problems instead of giving answers — but you can still misuse any tool.
Some honest signs you're slipping:
- You're copying flashcards directly into homework answers
- You're not actually trying problems before opening chat
- You're using quizzes as a way to find what to memorize for an exam, instead of as practice
- You can't explain a topic in your own words, but you've "studied" it
If any of those land, dial it back. Do the problem cold. Read the textbook. Then bring the leftover confusion to Fennie.
What's next
Once you've got one course running smoothly, add a second. Then a third. The system scales because the plan combines across courses — a single morning plan covering all of them, balanced so you don't crash one to save another.
If you're a more visual learner, ask chat for diagrams and walkthroughs. If you're an aural learner, ask for explanations in plain language and read them out loud. The chat takes those preferences seriously and Memory eventually starts defaulting to them.
If you teach yourself something well, write a note about it. If you read something useful, paste it in. Fennie's value compounds with what you put into it. It's a study app you co-write with.
Set up your first course in about ten minutes. Start with Fennie free — no card, no commitment.