Show HN: I built an AI exam prep platform for AWS certs after failing one myself | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built an AI exam prep platform for AWS certs after failing one myself

knowza.ai

3 pointsjohnnyChiv2 comments

Hey HN,

I failed the AWS Advanced Networking Specialty exam. Studied for weeks, used the usual prep sites, thought I was ready — wasn't.

The problem wasn't effort, it was the tools. Static question banks don't teach you to think through AWS architecture decisions. They teach you to pattern-match answers. That falls apart on the harder exams.

So I built Knowza to fix that for myself, and then figured others probably had the same frustration. The idea: instead of a static question bank, use AI to generate questions, adapt to what you're weak on, and actually explain the reasoning behind each answer — the way a senior engineer would explain it, not a multiple choice rubric.

The stack: Next.js + Amplify Gen 2 DynamoDB (direct Server Actions, no API layer) AWS Bedrock (Claude) for question generation and explanations Stripe for billing

The hardest part honestly wasn't the AI — it was getting question quality consistent enough that I'd trust it for real exam prep. Still iterating on that.

Early days, one person, built alongside a day job. Would love feedback from anyone who's grinded AWS certs or has thoughts on AI-generated educational content.

knowza.ai

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Looks pretty slick.

I have a similar idea, but based around computability, complexity, information, games (math sense), etc. I think it's going really well, but yeah, question quality is a huge part of the process. Absolutely dwarfs anything else.

The reason I bring it up is because I think people are going to want to try before they subscribe. They're going to want to run through a few questions before they pay you any money, and they might even want to run through some questions - and quite a few of them - before they give you their email address. And that's reasonable. (Especially in my case, where I'm working on a spaced-repetition model)

So the fact that you have a "Start practising" button, and I click that, and it takes me to a signup form, and then that takes me to a "here's the part where you pay me" screen kinda rubs me the wrong way.

I think everything looks great. I'm interested. I was able to sign up. I received the email, and able to verify. But there's no way I'd subscribe without solid access for some nontrivial period of time to a nontrivial number of questions.

Entirely possible I misunderstood something or I'm misusing the site, though - or that these issues won't concern other potential users.

Wait, so you are saying I should use an AI generated prep platform built by someone who failed at it? Have you stepped back to reflect on how this sounds to other people?

tl;dr - I'm going to look for experts on a subject, not someone who slings Ai, especially one who failed at the very subject

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