Howcomet — the app that asks your kid a question back

Howcomet

3 min read Original article ↗

Ask anything.
Collect everything.

Every question you finish becomes a star in your own sky. Ask about volcanoes, keep a volcano.

Free for 7 days, all of it. A grown-up's email to start, no card.

Howcomet answering how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, with a ring diagram showing egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly going round.

A real answer, in the app. Not a mock-up.

How a question becomes a star

💬

Ask the real question

Volcanoes, black holes, why your ears pop. Say it or type it. The answer is written for your age.

🎯

Beat the game

A quick game about what you just read. Get it wrong and it explains, then you try again.

Keep it forever

The star is yours. It fades if you leave it, and shines again when you come back.

Some things are easier to see

Rings, bars, orbits, waves. Pictures that move, so it makes sense at a glance.

An answer about how long animals live, with bars comparing a mouse, dog, elephant and giant tortoise.

Build your own constellations

Stars group into constellations: animals, space, numbers. The ones you are forgetting go dim. A map of everything you have learned, one question at a time.

A child's sky: 31 stars across six constellations, some bright and some dimmed.

For the grown-up who has to say yes

Handing an AI to a child is a fair thing to worry about. Here is what we do about it.

🛡️

Every question is screened

Before the tutor sees it. If one is refused, your child is told you will see it. And you do.

🔒

You set it up on your own phone

Your password is never on the tablet, so your page cannot be opened from your child's device.

🚫

No ads, no trackers, nothing sold

No third-party analytics, not even fonts. Speech stays on the device, so your child's voice never leaves it.

💛

Nothing to buy inside

No coins, no packs, no chests. Stars are earned, never bought. Rewards are things you agree to in real life.

The grown-ups page showing what a child asked this week and which topics are fading.

Your week: what they asked, and what is slipping away.

Reasonable things to ask

Is this just a chatbot with a cartoon font?

A chatbot answers and forgets. Howcomet answers, checks your child understood, and keeps it. After a month they have a map of what they know, and you can see what is fading.

What if it gets something wrong?

It can, and we would rather say so. But the games and pictures are not invented by the AI. We built those, and anything that does not check out is thrown away instead of shown. Your weekly page lists what your child asked, so you can see it for yourself.

How much screen time does this become?

Less than you would expect. There is a daily limit on what a child can earn, so playing longer does nothing. Stars come back to life by coming back tomorrow.

Do brothers and sisters share it?

One grown-up account, a sky each. Their own stars, their own reading level, their own goals. Nothing crosses over.

What happens to their sky if we stop paying?

It stays. They can still look at everything they built, they just cannot ask new questions. Months of a child's work should not disappear because a card expired.

Go and collect something

Free for 7 days. A grown-up's email is all you need to start.