YAWP! Prompts — free-write funnel into larger papers

# YAWP! Prompts — free-write funnel into larger papers

Daily writing prompts that produce a body of free-writes over time, which students then mine for material to develop into longer essays. The free-write functions as the funnel; the essay is the output.

## Problem

Reported 2026-02-01: students struggle to find essay topics when they sit down to write. They have plenty of thoughts; they just don't have a system that captures them and makes them retrievable later. Free-writes done over time create exactly that — but only if the workflow makes them retrievable and developable.

## Goals (rough)

- A flow where students do daily free-writes (overlap with [archive/daily-pages-assignments.md](daily-pages-assignments.md)).
- After ~5 days, students review their free-writes and pick one to develop into a longer paper.
- Yawp helps with the picking: surface recurring themes, suggest which free-write has the most "essay potential" (optional AI assist), or just let the student browse.
- The chosen free-write becomes the seed for a new essay document.

## Non-goals

- Mandatory daily writing. Optional cadence — teachers decide.
- AI doing the picking for the student. AI surfaces signal; student chooses.

## Open questions

- [ ] What's the right cadence — daily for a week before picking? Two weeks?
- [ ] Visualization for "browse your free-writes" — list, calendar, themes?
- [ ] Should the AI summarize on the side as the student writes (one of Kevin's two AI-incorporation ideas)?

## Engineering handoff

Not ready. Idea-stage. Closely connected to daily-pages-assignments and the broader vision for daily-pages workflow.