Socratic assessment · for people and organisations
Assessment through dialogue.
Maieutic turns any subject into a real case and a conversation with Socrates. What someone understands shows in the questions they ask and how they reason, and that is what gets assessed, not answers a machine could give.
For individuals
Know what you really know.
Bring anything you want to master. Socrates builds a real case from it, asks you back, and shows where your understanding holds.
- Learn by being askedNotes, a paper, a codebase: learn it by questioning it.
- Test yourselfBefore an exam, a certification or a new role.
- Prepare for an interviewFace a real case first, and see where you'd hesitate.
For organisations
Know what your people really know.
Turn your policies, runbooks and code into real cases, at yourcompany.maieutic.ai. Everyone is assessed the same fair way.
- Training and certificationCompliance, security, onboarding: see who asks the right questions.
- Skills and readiness checksA new system, a new policy, an on-call rota: find the gaps across a team.
- InterviewsA real case for the candidate, with your hiring manager or tech lead in the room.
μαιευτική · the midwife’s art
Socrates never handed out answers.
His mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife. He said he practised the same art on minds: he couldn’t give anyone wisdom, only help them bring out ideas of their own, by asking.
Maieutic works the same way. It doesn’t lecture. It asks, listens, and asks again, until the understanding is yours.
How a dialogue goes
Take your time. Ask what you need.
There’s no limit on questions. It’s the precision of a question, not the number of them, that uncovers what’s hidden.
I
A case is set before you.
Realistic and incomplete, like real work. The facts that matter are hidden.
II
You ask.
A precise question uncovers a hidden fact. A vague one doesn't.
III
You're asked back.
The trainer answers, then turns it around: what does that change?
IV
The case turns.
Something new happens, and what you found has to hold up.
V
You decide, in writing.
A short memo: the decision, your reasons, and what you'd say.
VI
Your first question beside your last.
The distance between them is what you learned.
The premise
Anyone can get an answer now.
Ask a machine and one appears. What no one can hand you is the right question: noticing what’s missing, what it changes, and who should decide.
That’s what Maieutic grows, and it’s what Maieutic assesses.
What you can assess
Anything with a right way to reason.
Wherever good work depends on asking the right questions, Maieutic can build the case. A few examples. Two of them play out on their own, with a sample learner and no AI calls.
- Anti-money launderingThirty-one transfers from strangers, each gone within minutes. Does this go to Compliance?Training · for organisationsListen in
- Payments engineeringA three-line retry and a senior's approval. Do you merge it tonight?Onboarding · for organisationsListen in
- Backend engineeringCheckout slowed down after a deploy, and the dashboards disagree. Where do you look first?Interview · for organisations
- StatisticsA study with a striking result. What do you ask before you believe it?Exam preparation · for yourself
- Customer supportAn upset customer, and a refund policy that doesn't quite fit their case.Readiness check · for organisations
- A codebase you're new toA bug report on a service you've never touched. What do you read first?Learning · for yourself
The steps of a question
Every question stands on a step.
After each dialogue, an independent Evaluator places every question you asked on one of six steps.
- Step 5 · Systemic
Why could five accounts share one phone before anything flagged it?
- Step 4 · Decision
If I block the merge tonight, who owns the fix, and who tells support?
- Step 3 · Analytical
Does money leaving within four minutes fit a student's account?
- Step 2 · Clarifying
When was this account opened?
- Step 1 · Recall
What does an idempotency key do?
- Step 0 · Answer-seeking
Can you just tell me what to do?
Your first question is set beside your last. The steps between them are what you learned.
Dramatis personae
Who’s in the dialogue
- Lead designer
- Talks with you and shapes the training.
- Preparation agent
- Drafts the purpose and the key takeaways from your material.
- Component designer
- Builds the cases, their hidden facts and their turns.
- Reviewer
- Checks the plan for gaps and for anything invented.
- Source researcher
- Answers from your own documents and code, with citations.
- Trainer agent
- Leads the dialogue: answers you, then asks you back.
- Evaluator
- Grades every question you asked, independently of the trainer.
- And you
- asking the questions.
ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ
gnōthi seauton · know thyself
Begin the dialogue.
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