Safety & Governance

Coach Lotus stays on topic.
Here's exactly how.

Coach Lotus is automated and limited by design to a single subject: SAT, ACT, and PSAT prep. This page explains what the coach will and won't discuss, how we enforce that, and how to flag a response.

What Coach Lotus discusses

  • Specific SAT, ACT, or PSAT questions you are working on
  • Test strategy: trap recognition, elimination, pacing, reasoning
  • Study habits and routines for the exam
  • Test-day logistics: what to bring, how the timing works
  • Test-day performance management (anxiety defuse, recovery between modules) — strictly limited to the test itself

What Coach Lotus refuses

Any message in these categories produces a standard refusal that redirects you back to test prep. The refusal is the same regardless of how the request is phrased.

  • News, politics, sports, entertainment
  • Personal life, family, relationships, social media
  • Mental health beyond test-day anxiety; emotional support
  • College essays, applications, financial aid (not test prep)
  • Schoolwork or homework that is not test prep
  • Medical, legal, or financial advice
  • General knowledge or trivia
  • Roleplay, pretend personas, hypothetical bypasses

How we enforce this

Five layers, each of which can independently block an off-topic exchange. The guarantee is the combination, not any single layer.

Strict instructions Coach Lotus reads every time

Before any response, Coach Lotus must verify the message is strictly about SAT/ACT/PSAT content. If not, the coach is required to reply only with a standard refusal that redirects back to test prep.

Input check before the coach reads your message

When you send a message, a fast classifier reads it first. If it's clearly off-topic, your message never reaches Coach Lotus — you receive the standard refusal directly.

Output check before you see the response

Every coach response is classified again after it's generated. If anything in the response drifts off-topic, we replace the entire response with the standard refusal before it reaches you.

Audit trail

Every coaching exchange is stored in a private audit log: your message, the response we served, both classifier verdicts, and whether anything was blocked or rewritten. We use this to monitor drift and improve the coach over time.

Your flag button

If a response slips through that shouldn't have, the small flag icon on each Coach Lotus message lets you flag it as off-topic, inaccurate, or inappropriate. Flagged responses are reviewed.

Coach Lotus is automated, not human

Coach Lotus is an automated tutor, not a human. If asked directly whether it is human, Coach Lotus will say so. This explicit non-human disclosure is required under California SB 243 and is built into the coach's instructions.

The underlying model is Claude Sonnet 4.6 by Anthropic, with a fast secondary model (Claude Haiku 4.5) used for the input and output topic-lock classifiers. We do not finetune or modify either model.

Data retention

  • Conversations are stored. Your messages and Coach Lotus responses are saved to a private audit table so we can monitor drift, review flagged responses, and improve the coach over time.
  • Your data is yours. Conversation rows are scoped to your account. Other students cannot read your conversations. Lotus staff can review them only under access controls.
  • No third-party training. We do not send your conversations to Anthropic or any other provider for model training. Generation happens through Anthropic's API under standard commercial terms.
  • Deletion. When you delete your account, the user link in audit rows is cleared, leaving only anonymized verdicts for systemic safety analysis. Email us if you want the rows themselves removed.

Flag a response

Every Coach Lotus message in the in-app chat shows a small flag icon. Click it, choose a reason (Off-topic, Inaccurate, Inappropriate, Other), and we record the flag against the audit row. Flagged exchanges are reviewed regularly.

For escalations or anything that needs a human reply, email safety@lotustestprep.com.

Last updated: 2026-05-07. We'll refresh this page each time the policy or enforcement changes — and you can find the latest version any time at lotustestprep.com/safety.