Coach Mode vs stealth interview assistants

What split the market in late 2025

Two events hardened the line between legitimate interview prep and stealth interview assistance.

September 2025: Amazon filed a civil suit against Cluely alleging that the product's core function, on-screen answer injection during live employer assessments, violated Amazon's assessment terms and constituted inducement to breach.

Late 2025: the founder of Interview Coder was publicly expelled from his university for using his own tool during a proctored assessment. The expulsion was academic, not civil, but the PR signal was unmistakable.

The prep market forked from that point. On one side: stealth tools that race to hide from screen-share. On the other: preparation tools that explicitly refuse to run during live assessments.

Why we chose the preparation side

Every AI provider we route through (Anthropic, OpenAI) prohibits use of their APIs for fraud and deception. Every payment processor we use (Stripe in the roadmap) restricts merchants in the "deception services" category. Every public cloud we might scale to imposes similar terms. The stealth lane runs out of infrastructure the moment it scales.

The preparation lane does not. Anthropic will serve our API calls indefinitely. Stripe will clear our payments. Our users can speak about the product publicly without risking offer rescission.

What Coach Mode actually does

Pins a problem prompt and an AI tutor chat on a secondary monitor while you practice on your main screen. Tracks session time so you can replay your own practice. Captures keystroke-level progress to feed spaced repetition. Exports a tamper-evident session receipt.

What Coach Mode refuses to do

It does not hide from screen-share. Screen recordings include it by design. It refuses to activate when any live-interview platform has window focus. The denylist includes HackerRank interview mode, CoderPad, CodeSignal, Amazon Chime with candidate context, Google Meet with candidate context, Meta CoderPad, Hired interview, and a dozen others we refresh weekly.

What this costs us

Market size. The stealth-cheat market is larger than the legitimate prep market by a factor of roughly three to five, depending on whose numbers you believe. We are intentionally sitting out that segment.

What it earns us

A product that can speak its own name. A user base that does not have to lie about using it. A path to Stripe, Meta ads, partnerships with career services offices. A retention curve that does not collapse the first time a user gets caught.