The Answer to the Problem You Actually Have
The camera solves what it read, not what you wrote. Five characters to check before you trust a single step.
What it is for
A pre-flight check on what the camera actually recognised, aimed at the five characters that get misread most. Reach for it before you copy any answer down, and any time the steps look flawless but the result feels wrong. It prevents the worst failure mode of a scanning solver: a perfect solution to a problem that is not yours.
The skill
Photomath solves what it read. If it read the problem wrong, every step below is correct and useless — and it will never look wrong, because it is perfectly consistent with the wrong problem. So do not start at the answer. Start at the expression it is solving, read it back against what you wrote, and check these five in this order. This is where recognition actually fails: 1. Signs. A minus in handwriting and a short fraction bar are the same stroke. So is a plus whose upright you wrote faintly. 2. Exponents versus coefficients. 2x and x squared look identical when the exponent sits low and close. This one changes the problem type entirely. 3. What is under the bar, root or bracket. Bar length decides whether the whole numerator is included, and bar length is what cameras get wrong. 4. Digits that share a shape. 1 and 7, 4 and 9, 5 and S, 0 and 6, and any 3 you closed at the top. 5. The variable. x, X and a multiplication cross are one glyph to a camera. If any of the five is wrong, stop — none of the working below it is about your problem. Correct the expression in place if you can edit what it read. Otherwise retake: a second capture is a fresh read and often fixes a misread minus or exponent on its own. If the same character comes back wrong twice, stop shooting it and type the problem in. Shoot one problem, not the page. A tight frame containing the whole expression and nothing from the line above beats a well-lit worksheet every time. And if a trigonometry answer is off in a way the steps do not explain, suspect the angle unit before you suspect the algebra. Degrees answered as radians is not a mistake you will find by rereading the working.
How to install it
1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template. 2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona. 3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.