This is a submission for the DEV's Worldwide Show and Tell Challenge Presented by Mux
What I Built
Bachu (kiddo in English) is an AI tutor for kids ages 6-12 that teaches and helps with homework — but never gives direct answers. It guides kids to think for themselves while keeping everything safe and giving parents full visibility.
Key features:
- 🎓 Socratic teaching (hints and questions, never direct answers)
- 🛡️ Built-in safety layer that screens every message
- 👨👩👧 Parent dashboard with conversation logs and safety alerts
- 🎤 Voice input/output for younger kids who can't type fast
- 📎 Homework photo/PDF upload with persistent cloud storage (my kid's idea!)
- 🎯 Weekly focus topics — parents set them, AI guides kids toward those concepts
My Pitch Video
Demo
🌐 Live: www.heybachu.com
For judges (test account with pre-setup kid):
Email: testparent@test.com
Password: test1234
Quick testing flow:
Log in → You'll land on the parent dashboard (Alex, age 8, is already set up)
Click "Enroll Device" → Click "This Device" to enroll your current browser → Click "Go to homepage" Pick a subject → Start chatting!
For community testing:
Use invite code: SHOWTELL2026 (limited to 50 users)
If you're just testing and not using it with your family, please send me a message or email to delete your account so others can try!
The Story Behind It
I'm 37. I come from the Jewellery business background — zero coding background. But I've been learning AI and agentic coding for the past 8 months, and my kids have been watching me use ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude for everything.
One day, my 8-year-old asked to use ChatGPT for his homework. I felt two things at once: excited and worried.
Excited because — wow, he wants to learn with AI, and a realization: why not? That's the future.
Worried because — have you seen what ChatGPT says sometimes? I've been using it for months and it still goes off-topic, makes things up, explains things wrong. That's not the place for a 7 or 8-year-old.
Also, kids always find a way to get around parents — so before they do, I built Bachu in a weekend. My kids started using it.
Then the moment happened.
My son came home from school, showed me his French test, and said: "These 2 marks — I got them because of Bachu."
If he'd asked me or my wife anything about French, or other subjects we couldn't have helped. Millions of parents face the same issue — I've seen it personally in our school WhatsApp groups. "How did you do that worksheet?" "What does this mean?" If you're a parent, you know.
But he's a curious kid who loves a challenge, and Bachu was there for him.
That's when I knew this couldn't just be a personal project.
P.S. My younger one is different — a bit shy, doesn't always know how to start a conversation with AI. So I built suggestion bubbles that appear after every AI response to help him feel comfortable and keep the conversation flowing.
The Bigger Vision
I believe AI orchestration is the next big thing, and I want my kids to grow up understanding it — safely. Bachu is just the beginning. There's a long roadmap ahead: progress tracking, interactive worksheets, logic builders, and more.
I want them to be creators with AI, not just consumers of it.
Technical Highlights
The Safety Layer
Safety is built directly into the tutor:
- Smart classification: Every kid message is analyzed for safety, off-topic content, or sensitive issues — all in a single API call
- Intelligent routing: Dangerous = blocked with caring response. Sensitive = handled carefully + parent alert. Off-topic = gentle redirect to the subject.
- Parent alerts: Medium and high-severity topics stay on the dashboard until the parent marks them "reviewed"
- Full logs: Parents can read entire conversations with timestamps
- Data privacy: I pay for all AI API calls — your kids' conversations are not used to train any AI models
Homework Helper
Kids can snap a photo of their homework or upload a PDF:
AI extracts questions and guides them through each one
Images stored in cloud (not lost on refresh)
Click-to-zoom for detail
PDF support with one-click open
AI verifies it's actually homework (not a personal photo) before processing
Performance (Help Welcome!)
Dashboard performance — Any suggestions to improve load times and layout on the parent dashboard? Currently it feels a bit heavy.
Soft reveal animation — Currently the AI responses come at once. I want AI responses to appear word-by-word more gently (not instant streaming). If anyone has solved this, I'd love to hear your approach!
What I'm Most Proud Of
Honestly? That I built it at all.
Coming from jewellery background, running several businesses, at 37 years old — I learned to code, built a full-stack AI app , and submitted to a competition. That's AI orchestration in action. Something I never thought I could do.
Use of Mux (Additional Prize Category Participants Only)
I'm using Mux to host:
How-to tutorial videos inside the parent dashboard (7 short clips teaching parents how to use every feature)
Why Mux?
For a first-time developer with a small project, Mux is perfect:
- Generous free tier — enough for how-to videos to run for a long time
- Incredibly easy integration — I was genuinely surprised
- Professional quality — auto-thumbnails, reliable CDN, no YouTube branding
If you're building a startup or side project that needs video, I can't recommend Mux enough. The developer experience was smooth from day one.
Thanks for reading! If you're a parent worried about AI and kids, or a developer interested in AI safety for children — I'd love to connect.
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