How Markmate works
The thirty-second loop — in detail.
Markmate is built around four moves: read the rubric, read your work, level every criterion, and feed back exactly what to fix. Here's what happens at each step.
Read the rubric
Up to 10 photos. Or one PDF. Or both.
Most rubrics aren't formatted cleanly. Markmate is built for the rubrics you actually get handed:
- →Dense criterion tables — IB MYP, IB DP, A-level mark schemes, MUN position-paper rubrics. The packed grids with four columns and tiny print.
- →Handwritten teacher notes — the scribbled annotations in the margin that explain what “sophisticated analysis” actually means for this assignment.
- →Highlighted PDFs — with your teacher's yellow / pink highlights on the criteria they care about most.
- →Multi-page rubrics — snap each page; Markmate stitches them together and treats them as one document.
Tip — landscape photos read better than portrait for wide criterion tables. Keep the camera roughly parallel to the page; Markmate's rectification handles most skew, but the cleaner the snap, the better the parse.
Read your work
Up to 15 photos, or paste it as text. Both — combined.
The work you submit is the half Markmate marks against. Two ways in, and you can mix them in the same submission:
Snap mode
Photos of handwriting
Markmate's OCR is tuned for student handwriting — small letters, mixed casing, crossed-out words, marginal additions. Up to 15 photos in one submission.
Paste mode
Type or paste your essay
For Google Docs, Word, Notion. Paste the body, paste a Markdown export, or type directly — Markmate keeps your formatting and treats each paragraph as a unit.
Mixed submissions are common — a typed draft plus a photo of the handwritten conclusion you scrawled in class. Markmate joins them in submission order and marks the whole thing as one piece.
Level every criteria
BEG, DEV, MEET, MWE — with a specific feedback sentence each.
Markmate doesn't give letter grades and it doesn't give percentages. Every criteria in your rubric gets one of four IB-style levels, and a one-sentence reason.
Hasn't met the basics for this criteria yet. Concrete fixable issues.
Some of what the criteria asks for, but not consistently.
Solidly meets the criteria. Defensible to the teacher.
Above the criteria — the sentence Markmate writes here tells you why.
Why four levels and not letters? Because four levels map onto most rubrics in the world Markmate is built for — IB MYP and DP use exact level descriptors, and most teachers grade against those bands rather than a 0–100 scale.
Tell you exactly what to fix
Bullet-point next steps, ordered by impact.
The feedback half is what makes Markmate useful — every evaluation ends with a short next-steps list. Two or three specific actions, ordered by which one would move your grade most.
Next steps to MWE — sample
- →Add one close-read sentence after the quote in paragraph 2.
- →Tighten the conclusion — currently restates the introduction.
- →The thesis is implicit; promote it to the final sentence of paragraph 1.
Feedback is the most opinionated part of Markmate. It will not give you “add more analysis.” It will tell you which paragraph, which sentence, and what to add instead.
Iterate — and watch the grade climb
v1, v2, v3 — Markmate tracks which suggestions you addressed.
The whole loop only matters if you can run it more than once. Re-submit a new version of the same piece and Markmate keeps the history.
Markmate compares versions criterion-by-criterion. If your v2 addressed the “tighten the conclusion” bullet from v1, it will say so explicitly — and the criterion that was on DEV will move up.
One sample evaluation
A rubric, a v2 draft, and what Markmate said.
Evaluation · v2
The Great Gatsby — Symbolism Essay
Markmate gives AI-generated insight — never quite 100% accurate, and probably never will be. Use it as a sparring partner; your teacher's judgement is final.
Ready when you are
Start grading.
Free, forever, for students.
20 evaluations a month. No card. No catch. Sign in and start the loop.