BetaThis first version runs only on your computer: no account, no cloud, and nothing sent to us.
Your child's voice never leaves your kitchen table.
La voz de su hijo nunca sale de la mesa de su cocina.
Your child speaks out loud to a tutor that runs on your own computer, in English or in Spanish. The listening, the teaching and the answering all happen on that machine, which is why their voice has nowhere else to go. Switch the internet off and the lesson carries on: that is how you check it.
One note when it opens in your state, and nothing else. We do not pass your address to anyone.
Mac beta
Download the tutor for Mac
One installer for Intel and Apple silicon, macOS 14 Sonoma or newer. The first time it opens it downloads what it needs (about 4.3 GB on most computers), checks every file, and starts it. After that it works with the internet off. Nothing about your child is sent anywhere.
Please read before you install
- This is unfinished software, handed out for testing. Expect things to break, and expect an update to change how it behaves.
- The tutor is an AI. It gets things wrong, and it can say something odd or plainly incorrect. Stay within earshot. It does not replace a teacher, a curriculum, or your own judgement about what your child is ready for.
- There is a safety check that pauses a lesson and asks for a grown-up. It does not catch everything, and it is not a crisis service. If a child is in danger, call someone who can help.
- Everything lives on that one computer. There are no backups and no way to export yet, so if the machine is lost or the app is removed, your child's progress goes with it.
- The installer is not signed yet, so macOS blocks it the first time.
- It is provided as it is, with no guarantees, and it is not certified by any school or state programme.
Use it with your child, not instead of you.
macOS will block it once. Here is how to open it.
- Open the downloaded disk image and drag tuts4tots into Applications, then open it from there.
- When macOS says it cannot verify the developer, close that dialog.
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, and click Open Anyway.
- Right-click → Open no longer works on macOS 15 and later. Use Open Anyway.
These beta builds are unsigned until we have an Apple Developer certificate. The block is Gatekeeper doing its job, not the tutor being broken.
- No account to make
- Nothing leaves the computer
- Works with the internet off
- Spanish, not translated
- Delete it all, any time
Unplug the internet. The lesson keeps going.
Desconecte el internet. La clase sigue igual.
The question worth asking about any talking program is where the sound of your child's voice goes, and who can hear it later. Here it goes nowhere, and you do not have to take our word for it. Sit your child down with the connection switched off: the tutor still listens, still explains, still answers out loud.
What stays on your computer: all of it
Qué se queda en su computadora: todo
In this beta, nothing about a lesson leaves your computer. There is no account and no copy anywhere else: each child's progress, the session notes and any safety pause stay on that machine, and the notes open only with your grown-up PIN. The only things we hold are the email address and state you give us on this page, and which language you read it in.
Never kept, never sent
- Recordings of your child's voice
- A written record of what was said
- Anything at all used to train a model
Kept on your computer, and only there
- Each child's first name, birth year and grade
- Each session's subject, date and length
- A short note on what was practised and what to watch
- Any safety pause, and when it happened
Watch a lesson, start to finish.
Vea una clase, de principio a fin.
Including the two parts most products would rather not show you: the moment it tells your child it is a machine, and the moment it stops the lesson and sends your child to find you.
A scripted walkthrough, not a live model. The real tutor runs on your own computer, which is exactly why it cannot run on this page.
Turn your wifi off before you press play. This does not need it.
This is the part you cannot un-see. Join the waitlist.
Join the waitlistYour child talks. The tutor talks back.
Su hijo habla. El tutor le responde.
Your child says the answer out loud instead of typing it, and the tutor answers out loud, on the subject that child is on, at the level that child is actually working at. It will go over the same thing four times without sighing.
Spoken both ways, nothing to type
Which matters most for the youngest ones, and for any child who reads more slowly than they think.
Reading aloud, with help on the hard words
Your child reads to the tutor and gets a nudge on the sounds that are not coming out right yet.
Pre-K through twelfth grade
Each child works at their own level, so the six year old and the fourteen year old share one computer.
Each child listed separately
Their sessions are kept apart in the grown-up area, so you can see who did what.
A tutor that speaks Spanish, not one that translates into it.
Un tutor que habla español, no uno que traduce del inglés.
A child can ask in Spanish, be answered in Spanish, and work through a whole subject without English coming into it at all. Reading aloud and help with pronunciation work in Spanish the same way they work in English. In a house where both languages are spoken, neither one is the exception here.
It tells your child it is a computer program.
Le dice a su hijo que es un programa, no una persona.
These are not settings buried somewhere for you to find and switch on. The first two are fixed lines on a timer rather than something the tutor decides to say, so they happen every session, whether or not an adult is watching. It is not a crisis service, and it does not stand in for the adult in the house.
It says what it is, out loud
At the start of every session, and again every three hours, it stops and tells your child it is a computer program and not a person.
It sends them off to stretch
Every three hours the lesson stops on its own and tells your child to get up, move around and drink some water.
It stops and waits for you
If a child says something that sounds like a crisis, the session ends, your child is told to find a grown-up in the house, and the tutor stays paused until a grown-up enters the PIN. It will not catch everything, and it will sometimes stop a session that did not need stopping.
No accounts, for you or for them.
Children have no accounts, no passwords and no email addresses. They sit down at the computer and start. In this beta you have no account either: a grown-up PIN on the computer guards the settings and the session notes.
Arizona first, then further out.
Primero Arizona, después otros estados.
We are building this for homeschooling families in Arizona to begin with, including the many households where the talk at the kitchen table happens in Spanish. Several states now hand education money straight to families, and this is being built to be bought that way, with the records those programs ask for. Waitlist families get two plain answers first: what the program does, and what a computer needs in order to run it.
What parents ask first
What does beta mean here?
It works, and it is early. Expect rough edges, and expect it to change as we learn what families need. This first version runs only on your computer: there is no account to make, nothing is sent to us, and the lessons carry on with the internet off.
Is my child's voice recorded and sent to you?
No. The listening happens on your own computer, and the sound of your child's voice does not leave it. We never receive it, so there is nothing on our side to store, to hand over, or to train anything with.
If the tutor stops a lesson, how do I find out?
At the computer. The session ends right there, your child is told to go and find a grown-up in the house, and the tutor stays paused until a grown-up enters the PIN. Because nothing leaves the computer, nothing reaches your phone or your email. If you are out, you find out when you get back to it. That is the real limit of keeping everything at home, and we would rather you knew it now than found it out then.
What does the pause screen say, if there is no transcript?
That the tutor paused a lesson because of something your child said, and that it needs a grown-up's PIN to carry on. It does not show what was said. What the pause does is send your child to you, which is the point of it.
Will my computer run it?
That is the fair question about anything that runs on your own machine, and we are not going to pretend any computer will do. The whole tutor sits on your machine, so the machine matters. Waitlist families get the requirements in plain language, so you can look at the laptop you already own and know the answer yourself. On a Mac, the tutor downloads what it needs the first time you open it, then starts those pieces itself. You need macOS 14 or newer and enough free space (about 4.3 GB for the first setup on most computers).
Can you promise it will never say anything wrong to my child?
No, and be careful with anyone who promises that. It is a computer program: it can be mistaken and it can be pushed. What we can tell you is what it is built to do, which is name itself as a machine, stop and wait for you when a child sounds like they are in trouble, and show you what every session covered. You are still the adult in the room, and the whole thing is built on that assumption.
Does it replace me teaching my child?
No. It takes the repetition: the twentieth time through a times table, the reading practice, the question your child is embarrassed to ask again. You keep the rest.
macOS says it cannot verify the developer. Is it safe?
These beta builds are not yet signed with an Apple Developer certificate, so Gatekeeper blocks them once. Download only from this site (Download for Mac), then use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. We never ask you to turn Gatekeeper off.
Be first in line when it opens in your state.
Sea de los primeros cuando llegue a su estado.
One note when it opens in your state, and nothing else. We do not pass your address to anyone.