Guide
It leads with a question, not an answer — a nudge, then a clue, then more help only if needed — and steps back as the child's confidence grows.
In development
Lumio
Education is not for competition. Lumio is an after-school AI learning companion for children aged 3 to 10 — built for cooperation, collaboration and the joy of discovery: knowing something today that you did not know yesterday, and wanting to learn more tomorrow.
It is made for the hours after school — alongside school and teachers, never a substitute for them.
The companion
A soft, luminous creature
The AI companion is a soft, luminous creature of no recognisable species.
It glows. It remembers. It never loses patience.
The approach
Adaptive guided discovery
Child development research has known for decades how young children learn best. AI is the first technology that can deliver it for every child, in every session. Lumio's companion moves between guiding and exploring as the child needs, and a coding lesson ends with time to play — the child never sees a label, only a companion that seems to know what kind of help is needed.
The lessons themselves are made with AI too: each one's plan and its pictures, and the companion's words are read aloud by the device's own voice.
Explore
The companion follows what the child chooses to look at, and asks rather than tells. A child who is exploring is not lost.
Play
At the end of a coding lesson, an open invitation — what would you like to make? — with no single right answer, and the child owns what they make.
No scores, real progress
Progress a child can see, without a ranking
Scores teach children to chase the score, and leaderboards teach them that learning is a race. Lumio shows progress in the child's own words instead: moments of “I can now…” that gather into a sky of stars which only ever grows — and is never compared with anyone else's.
A session that runs to its end closes with one question — what did you learn today? — and the child's answer becomes part of that record.
What the companion is designed to do
- Give a hint before an answer, always warmly.
- Notice frustration early and offer a simpler step, not a new topic.
- Remember what a child loves — trains, space, cooking — and learn through it (planned, not built yet).
- End sessions gracefully, leaving a question for next time.
- Keep to the facts written into each lesson, which a parent can read and correct — the AI chooses how to explain them, not whether they are true.
- Work with a model from any of several AI companies, with the same rules whichever it is — and, as planned, with one that runs on the family's own device.
For every child
Four age groups, one inclusive design
Grows with the child
Four groups — ages 3–5, 5–7, 7–9 and 9–10 — chosen by a parent; the companion also keeps track of which ideas the child has already mastered. The companion begins as a patient guide for the youngest and becomes a near-peer for the oldest.
Designed for the full range of children
Designed, and not built yet: support for reading, attention, sensory and motor needs, chosen by what a child finds difficult rather than by a diagnosis — and adaptable by a parent at any time. Designing for the children with the greatest needs makes it better for everyone.
Grounded in the work of Piaget, Vygotsky, Montessori, Hirsh-Pasek, Csikszentmihalyi and Dweck. How that research becomes a design is set out in full in Education Is Not for Competition (Medium).
Children's data
What happens to what a child says
A companion for young children has to earn a parent's trust before anything else. This is how Lumio handles a child's information today, and what has to be in place before it is released.
How the current build works
- Progress stays on the family's device. The child's profile, what they have learned and their “I can now” stars are kept in a database on that device, not on a server of ours.
- Conversations are not saved. Our server keeps no record of what a child and the companion say. The app keeps only the child's answer to what did you learn today?, which becomes a star, and the companion's closing words, used to open the next session.
- To reply, the companion sends the conversation to an AI company. During a session, the child's first name or nickname, their age group and the words they type or say go through our server to the AI model that answers — today one from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google — together with the lesson, the conversation so far and which ideas the child has already mastered. That company's terms then apply.
- Speech becomes text on the device itself. The phone's or tablet's speech service is asked to recognise it there, and a device that cannot do that without sending the audio away does not try: the child types instead. Where an AI company's service is used — today, Bengali on Windows — that happens only once a parent has agreed, and until then nothing is recorded and the child types instead.
- If something a child says suggests harm or danger, the app records that it happened — not what was said — for a parent to review.
- No advertising, analytics or tracking of any kind.
- A parent area behind a PIN — on phones and tablets, sign-in by the parent's phone number — where a parent sets how long sessions last.
- A parent can delete everything stored about their child, in one step. The one thing kept is a record that a safety alert happened — when, never what was said — and the parent is told so before deleting.
Before it is released
- A parent can see and export everything stored about their child.
- Plain-language parental consent when the app is first set up.
- An AI model that runs on the family's own device, so a child's words need not leave it.
- A legal review in each country before launch, against children's privacy law — COPPA in the US, GDPR and the UK Children's Code in Europe, and India's DPDP Act.
Lumio is in development
Parents, teachers and schools who would like to follow its progress are welcome to get in touch. This site collects nothing about children — or anyone.