How it works
Ask, check, fix.
Every ayyayo lesson runs the same loop. Your child asks for something, checks whether the result is what they meant, and fixes it by saying exactly what is wrong. Each lesson adds one ability to that loop.
Try the rule
If you don't say it, it gets guessed.
Type a game the way a ten-year-old might describe it. The box shows which of five common decisions the sentence actually states. Everything it leaves out, a builder has to make up.
- How it looksNot said, so it gets guessed (colours, shapes, background).
- How fast it movesNot said, so it gets guessed (slow, fast, gets faster).
- The controlsNot said, so it gets guessed (arrow keys, tap, swipe).
- What happens when you loseNot said, so it gets guessed (lives, game over, restart).
- How it endsNot said, so it gets guessed (a score to beat, a timer, a finish line).
5 of 5 would be guessed.
This box only checks your sentence for five common decisions. It is a simplified demonstration, not the AI. In the real lesson the builder lists its own guesses, including any that fall outside these five.
The loop, step by step
What happens in Lesson 1
Ask
ayyayo says: “Today we make a game with one thing you control and one thing to avoid. Tell me what you control, what you avoid, and where it happens.” Your child answers in a sentence or two, in any of the supported languages. The game builds on screen while they watch, then they play it for up to a minute.
Check
ayyayo asks: “I had to guess some things you didn't say. What do you think I guessed?” Only after your child answers does it show the list, titled What I guessed, and mark the guesses your child predicted.
Fix
Your child goes down the list and keeps or changes each guess, by voice or by tapping. The game rebuilds once with all the changes. Then round two: before the next change is built, ayyayo lists what it would have to guess, and your child decides as many as they want first.
Design choice
Why each lesson has a frame instead of a blank box
A blank box asks a child to invent the task and the standard for judging it, at the same time. Faced with an empty box, it is easy to type something short, get something passable, and learn nothing about asking.
A frame fixes the goal. “A game with one thing you control and one thing to avoid” is small enough to build in one go and concrete enough to check by playing: either the thing you control moves the way you said, or it doesn't. With the goal fixed, the one thing that changes from child to child is how well they describe it, and that is what the lesson teaches.
If a child asks for something too big to build in a minute, ayyayo says what it can build and offers smaller versions to choose from. Cutting an idea down to size is part of the lesson, not an error.
Design choice
Why ayyayo shows what it guessed
An AI fills every gap in a request with a choice of its own, and it does not mark which parts were choices. A child who never sees those choices can't learn to close the gaps.
So ayyayo's builder returns, with every game, a list of the decisions the child did not state: the look, the speed, the controls, what happens when you lose, how it ends, and anything else it made up. That list is what the lesson is built on. Your child predicts it first, so they practise spotting gaps before anyone points them out.
Design choice
Why Free Build is a reward
Free Build is ayyayo's open maker: games, stories, quizzes, talking characters and slide decks, built and changed by voice, and published to a link with a QR code if your child wants to share it.
It opens once the day's lesson is complete and stays open for the rest of that day. We put it after the lesson, not in place of it, so that open-ended making starts from the habit the lesson just practised: say what you mean, then check what you got.
Two rules the app keeps
Honest outcomes, and no praise for a bare tap
- ayyayo only says something is done after the app confirms it.If a build fails, the voice says so and the previous version stays on screen. It never claims a change that didn't happen.
- ayyayo praises decisions, not taps.Tapping through a screen earns nothing. Praise is tied to a specific choice your child made, and the lesson only completes when your child has predicted, corrected, passed the check and explained the rule in their own words.
See all six lessons
The curriculum lists the six abilities and the lesson that teaches each one.