At Khan Academy, our summer internships aren’t about coffee runs or sitting on the sidelines. They’re about giving talented students real ownership of projects that help advance our mission of free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. This year, engineering intern Anastasia Dunca spent her summer tackling a challenge that directly supports teachers: making it easier to search and find the documents they’ve created with Khanmigo, our AI-powered teacher assistant.

We sat down with Anastasia to learn what her internship was like, from the early days of mentor matching to the moment her code earned an official “LGTM” (Looks Good to Me) from her team.

Q: How did your internship start?

Before the summer starts, we go through a mentor-matching process where we share our interests and passions with the coordinator team. They match us with a team that will push us and give us a fun, exciting project. Once mentors are matched, laptops arrive, and my home setup is ready—it’s time for onboarding and diving into tasks.

Q: What project did you work on?

Q: How did you approach building the feature?

I started with a “naive stage” to get something working quickly—just correct, not perfect. Then I moved to a “precision stage,” improving speed and accuracy. Finally, I worked on iterations to fix bugs and polish the user experience. We tested by running prompts through a tool called the component runner to see if results matched expectations.

Q: What were some challenges and wins?

Permissions issues took some troubleshooting, but getting end-to-end search working was a big win. I was excited when the team gave me an “LGTM” on my work.

Q: How did you wrap up the project?

We decided to deploy behind a feature flag so a select group could test it without affecting production. I’m finishing my internship still working on that rollout.

Q: What’s your biggest takeaway from this summer?

As a Khan Academy intern, I got to apply my own research process to my project, learn new technologies, and truly own my work. I’m so thankful for my supportive team who kept me motivated, and I’m leaving with skills and confidence I didn’t have before.

Looking ahead

Anastasia’s summer project is just one example of how interns at Khan Academy make a direct impact on tools that teachers, students, and parents use every day. From learning new coding languages to contributing to real features in development, our interns experience what it’s like to be part of a mission-driven engineering team.