Academic Integrity Policy

Effective date: 4 September 2026 Last revised: 16 October 2026

This policy is part of the Terms of Service. It is separate from the other documents because it is the one you most need to read, and it deserves its own page rather than a clause buried in section 8 of something else.

Read it alongside the AI Output Disclaimer, which says what the generated text is and is not.

CourseLite does not write your assignments

Since 5 October 2026 CourseLite has no feature that drafts, fills in or submits an assignment. It used to be able to draft one into a Google Doc or Slides deck; that was removed, deliberately, because CourseLite is for learning your course rather than doing your coursework.

What remains is a study tool. Its chat will still explain your course material, and if you ask it to it will work through a problem with you. Whether you may use help like that on a particular piece of work is decided by your instructor and your institution, not by us — the rules differ between two courses in the same department, and the consequence of getting it wrong falls entirely on you.

So: know your course's rules before you use CourseLite on graded work. If you are not sure, ask your instructor. "I did not know" has never worked as a defence at an academic-integrity hearing.

1. What CourseLite is

CourseLite is a study assistant. It:

• reads the course material you already have access to,
• answers questions from that material and shows where each answer came from, and
• generates flashcards, practice tests, guided study sessions and study notebooks from it.

It does not draft, fill in or submit your assignments.

It is a tool that produces text for you to work with. It is not a source of verified answers, not a co-author with any standing, and not a substitute for learning the material.

2. You are responsible for your instructor's and your school's rules

This is the whole policy in one sentence: what your instructor allows is the rule, and CourseLite does not know what that is.

You agree that:

1. You will find out what is allowed. Read the syllabus. Read your institution's academic-integrity policy. If AI use is not addressed, ask — before you use it, not after.
2. Those rules override the product. A feature existing in CourseLite is not permission to use it. Some courses ban AI outright, some allow it for brainstorming only, some allow it with disclosure, some allow it freely. CourseLite behaves identically in all four cases; you are the one who knows which one you are in.
3. Rules vary per assignment. The same instructor may allow AI on a problem set and forbid it on the essay. Check per assignment.
4. Disclosure may be required. Many institutions now require you to declare AI assistance and to say how you used it. If yours does, do it.
5. Citation practice may apply. Some courses expect AI assistance to be cited like any other source. Follow whatever form your course requires.

We do not know your rules and cannot enforce them. CourseLite has no knowledge of your institution's policy, no way to read it, and no way to check your work against it.

3. Check what CourseLite tells you before you rely on it

An answer from CourseLite is a starting point, not a finished piece of work.

Before you rely on anything CourseLite produced — and, where your course allows it, before any of it informs work you hand in — you must:

• read every word of it;
• check every factual claim against the course material or another reliable source — the model can fabricate facts, misattribute quotes, invent citations and get arithmetic wrong, and it does all of this in a confident voice;
• check that it answers the question actually asked;
• check the sources. CourseLite shows where an answer came from, and that makes it traceable, not correct. The passage it points at may not support the claim, and it may not be the passage your instructor had in mind;
• check for unattributed copying. An answer assembled from course material may reproduce phrasing from that material. Quoting and citing it properly is your job, and passing it off as your own words is plagiarism whether a model or a person put it there; and
• do the work yourself. Copying a chat answer into an assignment is submitting somebody else's words, and most courses treat it that way.

4. CourseLite does not submit your work, and has no way to

There is no submission path in CourseLite. There never has been, and building one is not a detail somebody will fill in later. This is a rule in the codebase (CLAUDE.md rule 27) and it is enforced by the architecture, not by an intention.

Verified in the implementation:

• The only thing CourseLite reads from Canvas is your courses, and it never writes. Every request for course material is a GET to one fixed allowlist of read-only course paths (src/ingest/canvas/routes.ts), whether it comes from the extension in your browser or, if you connected Canvas by sign-in or API token, from our server on your behalf — the server checks the same list again. The only other requests are the sign-in's own plumbing (exchanging the sign-in code for a permission, renewing it, and cancelling it when you disconnect) and a one-time check that a pasted token works. Nothing anywhere in the project submits, posts, edits or deletes anything in your courses.
• Your Canvas password never reaches us. The extension uses the Canvas session you are already signed into. A Canvas sign-in happens on your school's own Canvas page. A Canvas API token, if you choose to paste one, is kept encrypted and deleted when you disconnect (Privacy Policy, section 3.3c).
• "Submitted" is Canvas's word, and we only read it. CourseLite stores Canvas's own submission status so it can show you what is still outstanding. That column is never written by us, and nothing you do in CourseLite marks an assignment as submitted (CLAUDE.md rule 27 — assignments.status, your own filing, and assignments.submission_state, Canvas's, are separate columns and neither derives from the other).
• CourseLite writes into none of your files. It does not create or edit Google Docs or Slides on your behalf; its Google access is used only to read course files you choose.

You write your work and you press submit. Every time. That is the boundary this product is built around, and the Acceptable Use Policy forbids you from building an automation that removes it.

5. No guarantee that generated material is acceptable for your course

We do not warrant, and you must not assume, that anything CourseLite produces:

• is accurate, complete, or current;
• is original, or free of material that resembles a source closely enough to be flagged;
• meets your assignment's requirements;
• would pass a plagiarism or AI-detection check; or
• is permitted by your course, your department, or your institution.

On AI-detection tools. Institutions use detectors that claim to identify AI-generated writing. They are unreliable in both directions — they flag human writing and miss machine writing — but they are used to open misconduct cases anyway. CourseLite makes no claim about whether its output will be detected, does nothing to evade detection, and would not help you if it could.

6. What CourseLite must not be used for

The following are prohibited under the Acceptable Use Policy and under this policy.

6.1 Exams and proctored assessments

Do not use CourseLite during an exam, quiz, test, or any assessment you are being asked to complete unaided. This includes take-home exams and timed online assessments where outside help is not permitted.

CourseLite has no feature that completes a quiz, a test or an assignment. Its chat answers questions about your course, and it cannot tell whether you are sitting an assessment while you ask — so the line is yours to keep. Using CourseLite on an assessment you were asked to complete unaided is a breach of this policy however the question is phrased.

6.2 Impersonation and work for other people

Do not use CourseLite to:

• complete coursework, an assessment, or an application on behalf of another student;
• produce work that somebody else hands in as their own;
• run a service that produces coursework for other people; or
• sit anything, or communicate with an instructor, as somebody else.

One person, one account. An account is for its holder's own coursework.

6.3 Prohibited assessments generally

Do not use CourseLite for any assessment where its use is prohibited — by your instructor, your department, your institution, a professional body, a certification provider, or a licensing authority.

6.4 Anything else your rules forbid

If your course's rules forbid it, this policy forbids it. That clause is deliberately open-ended, because your rules are the ones that matter.

7. The consequences fall on you

We want to be blunt about this, because the asymmetry is real.

If you submit work that breaks your institution's rules, the consequence is yours. That can mean a zero, a failed course, a permanent note on your record, suspension, expulsion, a withdrawn offer, or a lost scholarship or visa status.

CourseLite cannot help you if that happens. We are not a party to your relationship with your school, we have no standing in an academic-integrity process, and we cannot vouch for how you used the product. Section 16 of the Terms of Service excludes our liability for academic consequences, and that exclusion is there because the decision to hand something in is one only you can make.

8. What we do if we learn of misuse

If we learn that an account is being used to break this policy — running a coursework service for other people, completing assessments for other students, or automating submission — we may suspend or terminate it under Section 17 of the Terms.

We do not monitor your coursework, we do not report students to their institutions as a matter of course, and we have no relationship with any school through which we could. If a school or a law enforcement body makes a lawful request, we respond as the Privacy Policy describes.

9. If you are an instructor or an institution

We are not going to pretend this product is invisible to you.

CourseLite is a study tool built on a course's own material. Since 5 October 2026 it has no feature that drafts, fills in or submits a student's assignment, and it does not describe itself as one. Its chat explains course material and can work through a problem when a student asks, the way a study guide or a tutor might; whether that help is allowed on graded work is your call, and this policy tells students so (Section 2). It has never had a submission path.

If you have a concern about how CourseLite is being used in your course, contact support@courselite.org. We will not confirm or deny whether any individual holds an account, because that is their personal information, but we will act on a credible report of the misuse described in Section 6.

10. Questions

If you are not sure whether a particular use is allowed, the order is:

1. Ask your instructor. They are the only person who can actually answer it.
2. Read your institution's academic-integrity policy.
3. If it is a question about what CourseLite does — what it sends where, what it can and cannot reach, whether it submits anything — ask us at support@courselite.org and we will tell you plainly.

We can tell you how the product works. We cannot tell you whether your professor allows it.