CodeHS Student Features Powered by AI: Common Questions

CodeHS AI tools are built specifically for K-12 education, with student safety, privacy, teacher visibility, and district control in mind. CodeHS has two student-facing features that are powered by AI: Smart Hints and Vibe Coding.

Students access both features through CodeHS and don't need an account with an outside AI service. Student work isn't used to train AI models, and teachers can review student activity in both features.

Your district controls which AI features are available. Within the features a district allows, teachers decide what they use with their classes and students. Neither feature is required to use CodeHS.

There are two:

Smart Hints gives a student contextual help when they're stuck on a coding assignment.

Vibe Coding is an AI coding tool that lets students describe what they want to build, see the generated code, ask questions about it, edit it, and continue iterating.

These are separate features, and districts can decide whether they want students to have access to either one.

There are three places students may use AI through CodeHS. The first two are features that your district and teachers control. The third is curriculum, where learning about AI is part of the course itself.

Smart Hints is available while a student is working on a coding assignment. Students click the icon on the left side of the editor and choose from four preset prompts. There is no open-ended text box, and Smart Hints is not available outside the editor.

Vibe Coding is available where students build their own HTML programs. Students describe what they want to create or change, and the AI generates or updates the code. It works only with HTML programs, and the chat declines requests unrelated to coding.

Some CodeHS courses teach students about AI, so using AI is intentionally part of the coursework. What students use depends on the course.

AI Courses are controlled by the curriculum you choose to assign, not by the AI Policies page. If your district restricts external AI websites, reviewing which AI courses you assign is a separate step from disabling Smart Hints or Vibe Coding. You can find the comprehensive lists of external domains used in CodeHS courses in the Course White​list Catalog tool.

No. CodeHS can be used without student-facing AI features.

For CodeHS Pro districts, administrators can control which student-facing AI features are available through the AI Policies page in the Administrator Dashboard. If a feature is turned off at the district level, teachers can't enable it.

Within the features a district allows, teachers can decide what they use with their classes and students.

Yes, as long as the feature is permitted by the district.

Smart Hints and Vibe Coding can be enabled for whole Sections or for individual students. That means a teacher can use a feature with one class and not another, or enable it for some students while keeping it off for others.

If a feature is disabled at the district level, teachers can't turn it on themselves.

Smart Hints are designed to help a student take the next step when they're stuck. Instead of an open-ended chat, the student chooses one of four preset options:

The provided hint is based on the code that student actually wrote. It points the student toward a next step rather than giving them the answer.

Students can receive up to five hints per day, and teachers can review every hint a student receives.

There is no text box or open-ended conversation.

AI allows the hint to respond to the specific code a student wrote rather than giving every student the same generic troubleshooting message.

The feature came out of requests from teachers who wanted another way to support students when they couldn't get to them immediately, including students working independently or classes where several students are stuck on different problems at the same time.

Vibe Coding is an AI coding tool. A student describes what they want to build, and the AI generates code that appears directly in the editor. The student can read the code, ask why it was written a certain way, edit it directly, and continue iterating. Students can run the program, see what needs to change, and revise either their prompt or the code itself.

Vibe Coding only responds to coding questions, and teachers can review every conversation a student has with it.

Yes. Generating code from a student's prompt is part of how Vibe Coding works.

The generated code is visible to the student in the editor rather than hidden behind a finished result. Students can inspect it, ask questions about it, change it directly, run it, and continue iterating.

Vibe Coding is intended for activities where working with AI-generated code is part of the learning experience. Districts and teachers decide whether that type of activity fits their instructional goals and AI policies.

AI tools can help teachers give students more timely, individualized support without giving up control of the classroom.

Smart Hints can help a student take the next step when a teacher can’t get to them right away, while tools like AI Grading and AI Teacher Hints can give teachers a starting point for feedback that they still review and approve.

The goal is to help teachers spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on the parts of teaching that require their judgment, context, and relationships with students.

AI is becoming part of how people learn, work, and build. Giving students guided opportunities to use it in school can help them learn how to use it thoughtfully rather than just encounter it on their own.

With AI-powered tools, students can get support that is responsive to their own work, while teachers remain in control of when and how those tools are used.

With AI curriculum, students learn how AI works, where it can go wrong, how to evaluate its output, and how to use it responsibly. The goal isn't just to teach students how to use AI — it's to help them become more informed, critical users of it.

No. The two student-facing features powered by AI work differently.

With Smart Hints, students can't type an open-ended request or ask the system to solve an assignment. They choose from four preset buttons, receive no more than five hints per day, and each hint is designed to point toward the next step rather than provide the answer. Teachers can review every hint.

Vibe Coding is explicitly an AI-assisted coding experience, so the AI does generate code from student prompts. Students see and work directly with that code, and teachers can review every conversation. Districts and teachers decide when that type of AI-assisted work is appropriate.

Smart Hints doesn't have an open-ended chat at all. The four preset buttons are the entire student interaction.

Vibe Coding has a prompt box, but it only responds to coding questions. Teachers can review every conversation.

Vibe Coding has a prompt box, but it's built to handle coding requests and questions about code, and it declines things outside of that. Prompt length is capped, total usage is capped by credits, and teachers can read every conversation a student has had.

Smart Hints can't be used this way at all. There's no text box — a student picks one of four preset buttons, so there's nothing to type into.

If you or a teacher finds something that shouldn't have been allowed, send details of the issue to support@codehs.com to help us improve the filtering.

There are two layers of safeguards.

No filter is perfect. If something reaches a student that shouldn't have, send details of the issue to support@codehs.com to help us improve our safeguards.

Yes.

For Smart Hints, teachers can review every hint a student receives.

For Vibe Coding, teachers can review every conversation between a student and the AI.

No.

Students access Smart Hints and Vibe Coding through CodeHS and don't need to sign up for or maintain a separate account with an outside AI service.

It stays inside CodeHS's own environment.

CodeHS runs its AI features on models hosted within the same private, isolated AWS environment that runs our servers and databases. Student work is not sent to a consumer AI service like ChatGPT, and the companies that build the underlying models do not receive it.

Student inputs are also not used to train or fine-tune AI models.

No. Student work is not used to train AI models.

For more information about how CodeHS handles AI and student data, see our AI Statement.

The AI features are available across grade levels, but how they’re used may differ by age, course, and district policy.

For example, Vibe Coding is most often used with older students because it’s tied to learning how to work with AI-generated code, while Smart Hints can be useful anywhere students are working through coding assignments.

If your district wants different AI settings for middle school and high school, contact your Account Manager or accounts@codehs.com for help setting that up.

Teachers can also control student-facing features by Section, so even when a district allows a feature, individual teachers can still decide whether to use it with their classes.

Yes.

Neither Smart Hints nor Vibe Coding is required. Your district can keep both student-facing features turned off and continue using CodeHS without them.

You can review your district's current settings from the AI Policies page in the Administrator Dashboard.

Different districts are taking different approaches to AI, and we want CodeHS to support that range.

Smart Hints was developed in response to teachers asking for a way to give students more individualized help when they couldn't reach every student immediately.

Vibe Coding gives schools that choose to teach AI-assisted coding a way for students to work with generated code inside a teacher-visible CodeHS environment.

Neither approach is required. Districts decide what fits their policies, students, and instructional goals.

The most important points are:

For additional parent-facing resources, visit codehs.com/aicenter.

District administrators can review their settings from the AI Policies page in the Administrator Dashboard.

Your CodeHS Account Manager can also walk through your current configuration, answer questions about either feature, and help your team determine the setup that best matches your district's policies.

For additional information, visit codehs.com/aicenter.

Both features are included with CodeHS Pro, and both draw from your plan's AI credit balance.

Smart Hints uses very few credits, and students are capped at five hints a day.

Vibe Coding uses more credits because generating and revising a program is a bigger request than a hint. Most schools will not need to purchase extra credits; however, a class working through the Introduction to Vibe Coding course will use a meaningful share of a plan's balance, and districts that want more can purchase additional credits.

Turning either feature off costs nothing and doesn't change anything else about your plan.

Check out AI Credits and Usage Limits for more about AI credits on CodeHS.