An AI workspace for modern studying.
Parchment is a multimodal study application built for the Amazon Nova AI Hackathon. It brings together source-aware chat, math solving, diagram understanding, flashcard generation, and real-time voice tutoring in one workspace designed for students.
- Amazon Nova AI Hackathon
- Focus areas: Agentic AI, Multimodal Understanding, Voice AI
Parchment is built around a simple idea: studying should feel like working in an intelligent workspace, not jumping between disconnected tools.
With Parchment, a student can:
- chat with a general study assistant
- upload PDFs, notes, images, and text sources
- ask questions grounded in selected study materials
- generate flashcards from a topic or source
- solve math problems with step-by-step explanations
- use a whiteboard for diagrams and math work
- ask questions about uploaded diagrams or board sketches
- switch into a live voice tutoring experience
| Capability | Student Experience | Core Tech |
|---|---|---|
| Source-aware study chat | Ask questions over selected notes, PDFs, and images | Strands agents, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Nova |
| Math workspace | Solve problems step by step with a board and computation tool | math_agent, mathjs, nerdamer, canvas snapshots |
| Diagram mode | Analyze whiteboards, flows, and biology/architecture diagrams | diagram_agent, multimodal input, canvas inspection |
| Flashcards | Generate and review study decks inside the app | flashcard_agent, validated flashcard tool |
| Voice tutoring | Speak with the assistant and get live study aids | Amazon Nova 2 Sonic, Socket.IO, real-time audio streaming |
| Multimodal context | Mix text, PDFs, and images in one session | PDF extraction, selected-source tools, image inputs |
Parchment uses a Strands multi-agent design inside a Next.js application.
- The main
parchment_agenthandles general study assistance and routes specialized requests. - Specialist subagents take over for focused tasks instead of forcing one prompt to do everything.
- The frontend streams model output and tool events from the backend in real time.
- The voice experience runs through a dedicated server for low-latency speech interaction.
flowchart LR
U["Student"] --> UI["Next.js Workspace UI"]
UI --> CHAT["/api/chat"]
UI --> VOICE["Voice Mode UI"]
CHAT --> PA["parchment_agent"]
PA --> MA["math_agent"]
PA --> DA["diagram_agent"]
PA --> FA["flashcard_agent"]
PA --> ST["Selected source tools"]
MA --> MT["Sandboxed math tool"]
DA --> CT["Canvas inspection tool"]
FA --> FT["Flashcard generation tool"]
CHAT --> BR["Amazon Bedrock"]
BR --> N2L["Amazon Nova 2 Lite"]
VOICE --> VS["Voice server"]
VS --> NS["Amazon Nova 2 Sonic"]
The main study assistant and router.
Responsibilities:
- handles general educational chat
- reads selected study sources when needed
- routes flashcard requests to the flashcard subagent
- routes diagram and whiteboard requests to the diagram subagent
- routes quantitative and symbolic problem solving to the math subagent
A specialist agent for solving math problems.
Responsibilities:
- solves equations and quantitative problems
- uses a sandboxed JavaScript tool instead of relying only on raw model arithmetic
- explains solutions step by step for student readability
- accepts canvas snapshots and uploaded math images as visual context
A specialist agent for visual interpretation and diagram feedback.
Responsibilities:
- inspects the current canvas snapshot
- answers questions about diagrams and sketches
- gives feedback on structure, flow, and interpretation
A specialist agent for study deck generation.
Responsibilities:
- collects topic and card-count requirements
- generates structured flashcard payloads
- validates flashcard quality before the UI renders the deck
Parchment is built on AWS with Amazon Nova models.
| Layer | Service / Model | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Main study reasoning | Amazon Bedrock + us.amazon.nova-2-lite-v1:0 |
fast, cost-effective reasoning for chat and subagents |
| Voice interaction | Amazon Nova 2 Sonic | real-time speech-to-speech tutoring |
| Agent orchestration | Strands Agents SDK | routing, tools, streaming, subagent control |
- Amazon Bedrock runtime for model inference
- Amazon Nova 2 Lite for general and specialist study reasoning
- Amazon Nova 2 Sonic for conversational voice
- environment-based AWS region/profile setup for local development
- tool use
- multimodal understanding
- real-time voice interaction
- agentic routing through specialist subagents
Parchment is designed around mixed study inputs, not just plain chat.
Supported study inputs:
- PDF documents
- text-based notes and documents
- images
- whiteboard sketches
- spoken questions in voice mode
How that flows through the system:
- A student uploads sources into the workspace.
- They activate the sources relevant to the current question.
- The frontend extracts text where possible and passes selected context to the backend.
- Agents use source tools or multimodal inputs depending on the source type.
- The answer is streamed back into the workspace, along with any tool output such as flashcards.
Parchment is built as an education app first.
The product direction is intentionally student-facing:
- one workspace instead of many disconnected tools
- support for studying from actual course materials
- visual and voice-based interaction modes
- step-by-step reasoning for learning, not just answers
- flashcards and quiz-style workflows for active recall
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Frontend | Next.js, React, TypeScript |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS v4 |
| Agents | Strands Agents SDK |
| Model provider | Amazon Bedrock |
| Reasoning model | Amazon Nova 2 Lite |
| Voice model | Amazon Nova 2 Sonic |
| Whiteboard | tldraw |
| Realtime transport | Socket.IO |
| Math execution | mathjs, nerdamer, Node vm sandbox |
| Document handling | pdfjs-dist |
src/
agents/ Strands agent definitions
app/ Next.js app router and API route
components/ UI modes and workspace components
lib/ shared client/server helpers
tools/ agent tool definitions
types/ shared TypeScript types
server.ts voice server for Nova Sonic
voice.sh helper script for voice mode
Install dependencies:
pnpm installStart the app:
pnpm devStart voice mode server in a second terminal:
pnpm dev:voiceOptional AWS login helper:
./scripts/login.shStudents do not study in one modality. They read notes, inspect diagrams, solve equations, revise with flashcards, and talk through ideas out loud.
Parchment brings those study behaviors into one agentic workspace powered by Amazon Nova.