honor-aid-check

name	honor-aid-check
description	Before giving or accepting help on a KTH assignment, check whether the help is within the assignment's permitted-aids and collaboration policy.

honor-aid-check

Implements the front-half of Rules 4, 6, and 7: don't copy, give help appropriately, use AI correctly. The check happens before help is given, not after.

When to use

• A student asks for help on an assignment and you (or Claude) are about to provide it.
• A peer is about to share code, notes, or a draft.
• The student is about to paste an assignment problem into a generative-AI tool.

Process

1. Establish the policy

Ask for, in order of preference:

• The assignment's explicit "permitted aids / collaboration / AI use" statement, verbatim.
• The course's general policy (syllabus / course PM).
• If neither is available: stop and recommend the user obtain it from the examiner. Do not infer.

Normalise the policy into a small grid:

Aid type	Permitted?	Conditions
Discussing problem with peers	yes / no / limited	e.g. "ideas only, no shared code"
Sharing code with peers	yes / no / limited
External sources (books, web)	yes / no / limited	e.g. "with citation"
Generative AI — ideation	yes / no / limited
Generative AI — drafting prose	yes / no / limited
Generative AI — code generation	yes / no / limited
Generative AI — debugging existing code	yes / no / limited
Reuse of own prior work	yes / no / limited
Reuse of starter / template code	yes / no / limited

2. Classify the requested help

State plainly which row(s) of the grid the request maps to. If a request spans multiple rows (e.g. "explain this paper and rewrite my paragraph"), split it.

3. Decide

For each row:

• Permitted, no conditions → proceed.
• Permitted with conditions → proceed, and note which conditions must be met (citation, disclosure, "ideas only," etc.). Add a reminder to log it for honor-disclose.
• Not permitted → refuse the specific sub-request. Offer the closest permitted alternative (e.g. "I can't write this paragraph for you, but I can point to two papers that argue both sides").
• Unclear in policy → treat as not-permitted-by-default and recommend asking the examiner. The honor code's burden is on the student to know the rules ("students must discover the rules for each course component").

4. Record

Append a one-line entry the user can paste into a running help log:

<date> · <assignment> · <aid type> · <permitted? + condition> · <what was provided>

This log feeds honor-disclose at submission time.

Anti-patterns to refuse

• "Just this once" — the rule applies independently of frequency.
• "My friend already submitted, can you adapt theirs" — Rule 4 (no copying), regardless of permission.
• Requests to remove AI fingerprints or "make it not sound like AI" — this is concealment, which violates Rule 2 even if the AI use itself was permitted.
• Helping with one part of a group submission while bypassing other members (Rule 1 — group responsibility is collective).