ChucKsplainer is a Web-based chatbot that teaches ChucK—a programming language for music creation—by helping students explore, understand, and complete ChucK code. This platform democratizes educational resources for both computer science and music education.

ChucKsplainer consists of three specialized agents working in tandem—one for code exploration, explanation, and completion; one for test case generation; and one for test case execution. The first agent responsible for response generation also performs Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) on a comprehensive corpus of materials to ensure response validity. These sources include code examples and documentation on variable types, syntaxes, and functions acquired from ChucK’s official website. In addition, the agents are configured with chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting. These extensive prompts align ChucKsplainer’s output with the expertise of human instructors to cultivate engaging learning experiences.

Future developments of ChucKsplainer will explore 1) Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) embeddings for ChucK, 2) empirical evaluations of student learning outcomes through mixed-methods user studies, and 3) teaching style transfer from materials such as Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists: Creating music with ChucK.