Pip Ai

Pip turns your child's school books into 15 calm minutes a day. Snap the book pages and get a chapter-by-chapter daily plan, lessons built around their interests, quizzes and an AI coach.

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Inspiration

Every evening, millions of parents fight the same homework battle: a tired child, a school book neither of them fully understands, and learning apps that teach something different from what the class is actually studying. Private tutors are expensive, and most families can't afford one.

We wanted a tutor that starts from the child's own school book, fits into 15 to 59 minutes a day, and gives busy parents visibility without nagging. That's Pip, a friendly study buddy for kids with a smart plan behind it for parents.

What it does

  • Snap the contents page. The parent takes 1–3 photos of the book's contents page. In seconds, Pip's AI reads the subject, grade, chapters and topics, in the book's own language (English, Urdu, Arabic and more).
  • A chapter-by-chapter daily plan. Pip builds a paced 15-minute daily plan that mixes new topics with spaced-repetition reviews. Reviews ramp up automatically before a test date the parent sets.
  • Lessons built around their interests. Swipeable lesson cards with AI-generated diagrams and visuals, personalised to what the child loves: a football fan learns fractions on a football pitch.
  • A patient AI coach. When the child is stuck, Pip coaches them step by step to the answer. It never just hands it over.
  • Quizzes and streaks. Quick 3-question mastery checks with shame-free feedback, XP, levels and a daily streak.
  • Made for parents. A progress dashboard ("on track" per subject), a Sunday weekly report (missions done, quiz accuracy, topics mastered, what needs review), daily reminders, and homework capture: snap the school diary, and Pip extracts tonight's tasks for the parent to approve.
  • Made for families. Up to 4 children, each on their own device (linked by QR code), protected by a parental gate, with no ads.

How we built it

  • Mobile app: React Native + Expo SDK 56 in TypeScript, with Reanimated for motion and react-native-svg for vector art. The onboarding funnel includes a live camera scan, real AI extraction and a personalised plan preview, so parents see the value before the paywall.
  • Backend: Fastify + PostgreSQL on Railway, with row-level security so every family's data is isolated, plus Cloudflare R2 for photo uploads.
  • AI: Anthropic Claude. Vision reads contents pages and school diaries; the language model generates lessons, visual explanations, quizzes and coach replies, grounded in the book's topic and the child's interests.
  • Monetization: RevenueCat powers everything: offerings with live localised prices, the pro entitlement, intro-offer eligibility checks, restore purchases, and webhooks that provision kid seats and book quotas on our server.

Challenges we ran into

  • Making the scan instant and honest. We built a rate-limited preview endpoint so parents see their book's real chapters before signing up, and clear "couldn't read that page, retake" states instead of fake results.
  • Kid seats with RevenueCat. Mapping purchases and upgrades to the right family took careful work: logging in with our account ID on every launch, and handling PRODUCT_CHANGE webhooks so a 2-kid plan upgraded to 4 kids unlocks instantly.
  • App Review. Passing subscription review taught us to submit the app, subscriptions and subscription groups together, and to make the paywall fully transparent: billed price first, clear auto-renew terms, and the free trial shown only to users who are still eligible.
  • Designing for two audiences. The parent is the buyer, but the child is the user. The design has to earn a parent's trust and still feel like fun to a 9-year-old.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Shipping a polished, fully custom app to the App Store inside the Shipaton window.
  • A camera-first onboarding: a parent snaps one page and, seconds later, sees their own child's chapters and a real daily plan.
  • Lessons that adapt to the book's language and the child's interests, so one app works in many classrooms and countries.
  • An honest paywall: live prices, a real "save vs weekly" calculation, and a free trial offered only to eligible users, verified with RevenueCat.
  • An animated, character-driven design with Pip, our 3D mascot, across the app and the store.

What we learned

  • Parents buy outcomes, not "AI": calm evenings, confident kids and test-ready grades.
  • The moment that sells Pip is seeing your own child's book understood in seconds, so we moved it to the heart of onboarding.
  • Honesty converts: showing real chapters, real prices and real trial eligibility builds more trust than hype.
  • RevenueCat let a small team ship subscriptions, add-on seats and server-side entitlements without building billing infrastructure.

What's next for Pip Ai

  • Voice coaching for younger children who can't type yet.
  • Practice exams generated from the book before every test.
  • A coin shop where kids personalise Pip with what they earn, for stronger daily motivation.
  • Streak-saver reminders, and more parent insights.
  • Localised pricing and languages for more countries, so every family can afford a tutor built from their child's own school books.

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