From Intake to First Lessons: Curriculum, Path, and Generating Lessons
Once a student's intake interview is complete (see Adding a New Student and Completing the Intake Interview), Primer already knows enough to build their curriculum, but it hasn't generated any actual lessons yet. This article walks through that gap: what a fresh student's workspace looks like, and how to generate their first batch of lessons.
On this page
The post-intake landing state
Right after completing intake, the student's Today tab shows a simple prompt instead of lesson cards.
Two shortcuts are offered if you want to fine-tune anything before generating lessons: Curriculum and Path.
Curriculum is already populated
Even before any lessons exist, the Curriculum tab has already been filled in automatically from the intake answers: every skill selected in the "Where They Are Now" step appears here at 0% mastery, along with the standards frameworks chosen during intake.
You can adjust this at any time: add or remove skills, change standards alignment, or type a plain-language note in Quick Update.
Path shows the full skill ladder, by subject
The Path tab organizes every selected skill into subject-specific ladders. Tabs across the top let you filter by subject or view everything at once.
Within each subject, skills are broken into numbered units. You can drag units to reorder them, skip ones the student doesn't need, or mark earlier units mastered: useful if a student already covered material elsewhere.
Generating the first batch of lessons
Clicking Generate Lessons opens a short three-step wizard.
Step 1: How many lessons?
Pick a batch size: 1, 3, or 5 lessons.
Step 2: Review the plan.
Primer shows exactly which lessons it intends to build, each tagged with a priority (for example, "High priority" for goals you flagged during intake) and the specific skill it targets. You can swap any slot to a different subject before generating.
Step 3: Auto-generation.
Decide whether Primer should automatically queue up the next batch as soon as the student finishes this one, or wait for you to review and adjust each time through this same wizard.
Click Generate Lessons to kick off the build. This step runs real AI generation, so it can take a minute or two. Primer shows live progress as each lesson is built.
The result: a personalized first batch
When generation finishes, the Today tab fills in with real, ready-to-use lessons, each drawing on the interests and goals captured during intake. In this example, the student's stated interest in animals and pets shaped an argument-writing lesson about dogs versus cats, while a stated interest in Earth science shaped a science lesson on plate boundaries.
Opening a lesson shows the full generated content: a short instructional passage, key terms in bold, and estimated time to complete.
From here, the student appears back on the Family Dashboard alongside everyone else, with their own "Next Up" lesson and focus skills, ready to go.