There are two operational settings for the CSTutor: (1) Use as a functioning system for students and instructors in a designated lab. (2) Use as a functioning system for any user on any machine.

The CSTutor is intended to be of use to anyone, but has been designed for use by the Computer Science department at Cal Poly. The software should be used on a network so that a student can see all available tutorials created by an instructor. This also allows the instructor to see overall class progress. The setting for which it is appropriately suited is a school lab or network, where the software will be able to easily update a server with new tutorial pages and overall class progression. But, anyone will be able to use the software, regardless of being on a network or not. They just will only be able to update, create, or view tutorials hosted on their machine.

Once logged in users will be able to create, edit, or view a tutorial. The CSTutor has been designed to fit the curriculum used by Gene Fisher in an undergraduate core course using Java. However, any user will be able to edit tutorials based on permission levels created by the author of that tutorial. This allows the tool to be used by anyone to create tutorials, not necessarily in the traditional instructer/student relationship. The tool also provides methods to change the language used in the interactive shell.