Hooking an essay-grading criteria pipeline to a weekly scheduled task with WorkBuddy

Last Wednesday around 10 PM, all 42 essay electronic drafts from our class were finally collected. In the past at this time I'd still be renaming files—over forty documents per class, with all sorts of naming: some called "New Microsoft Word Document," some called "Essay Final Draft Really Final Draft." Now I basically don't touch this step anymore—drag the whole folder into WorkBuddy's working directory, and leave the rest to the task.

The other day I glanced at WorkBuddy's update log, from 5.8.3 to 5.9.3—more than half the entries are fixes. Freezes caused by memory bloat after long-running use, connection anomalies after switching proxies, migration to a new computer only allowing full import without selecting by category—I've pretty much hit all these pitfalls. Whether a tool is mature or not, you can tell by whether the update log has more new features or more fixes.

How I configured it

First, my environment: Windows laptop, school network goes through a proxy, WorkBuddy is the desktop version, used for over two months. Other environments may differ.

Step one is creating the working directory. Open WorkBuddy, find Space in the left sidebar, click New. I fix the directory name in the format class-date-essay title, e.g. 6-3-1015-My Mom. Don't end the name with a space—the official log specifically fixed this; a directory name ending with a space causes historical sessions to fail to open.

Step two, select all the documents students submitted and drag them into this directory. After dragging, check the artifacts panel on the right—the list of generated files—and see if the count matches. Among forty-plus files there are often two or three that are empty or can't be opened; this step catches them early.

Step three is writing the task instruction. This is the most critical part, and where I've hit the most pitfalls. At first, to save hassle, I just wrote "help me grade these essays," and the output was unusable. Later I learned better—the instruction must clearly state three things: role, output format, constraints. My current version is roughly:

You are a primary school Chinese teacher, reading the student essays in the directory one by one. For each, output four columns: original sentence excerpt, the question I follow up with, evidence the student can supplement, suggested grade. Do not rewrite the student's original sentences, do not provide model essays. Export results as a table, with the filename containing "evidence pipeline."

Note the last sentence "do not rewrite the student's original sentences." Without it, nine times out of ten it'll helpfully polish for you—and that becomes ghostwriting. I said this in a post last year too: the tool itself has no stance; it all depends on how you set up the process.

Step four, set up a scheduled task. There's a schedule button in the top right of the task panel; click it, choose weekly, set the time to Wednesday 8 PM, save. That way, as long as I drag the drafts into the directory Wednesday afternoon, at 8 PM it runs on its own, and the next morning I open it to a table.

Two pitfalls you can't avoid

First, scheduled tasks are not cloud-based. If the computer is off, asleep, or disconnected, it won't run—and it won't report an error; the table is just empty. The 5.9.1 cross-device one-click migration is indeed handy—tasks, spaces, and scheduled tasks can all move over together—but after migrating, scheduled tasks must be manually verified. I learned this the hard way: a whole week's tables were empty.

Second is permissions. The resource library now supports directory and permission management. Our grade group of four teachers shares one resource library; I gave myself edit permission and the other three read-only. Don't underestimate this—previously everyone had edit permission, and one teacher accidentally deleted the original drafts directory, so I had to collect all the essays again. The path to change permissions now is the member entry in the top right of the resource library, select the person, then click the permission dropdown.

Daily maintenance is just two things. At the start of each month, clear the artifacts directory—accumulated tables and intermediate files slow down startup; 5.8.3 fixed exactly the long-running memory bloat. Also, after each major version update, pick one essay and manually run the full process to confirm the output format hasn't changed. This habit was forced on me by the 5.8.2 issue where some historical sessions couldn't be opened.

The time saved isn't much—about one evening a week. But that saved evening, I no longer have to stare blankly at forty filenames.