Daily quests built at home, for doing together

Two very different kids

My son is 13. He'd rather take a controller apart than open a textbook, he knows more about soccer transfers than most commentators, and he'll happily spend an hour on a puzzle as long as nobody calls it homework. My daughter is 16. She'll write for hours — but only about the things she chooses — and she has a finely tuned radar for anything that feels like it was designed for a younger child.

Nothing off the shelf fitted both of them. Learning apps were either built for much younger kids, or were drill-and-repeat with a cartoon on top, or wanted them scrolling a feed. Printed activity books lasted about three days. What actually worked, when it worked, was a parent sitting down with a good idea that was pitched exactly at them: a math problem about their team, a riddle at dinner, a game of chess, a writing prompt about a show they'd just watched. The trouble is that nobody has a good idea every single day.

So I built the thing that has the ideas

Tandomo started as a private app on a computer at home. Each morning it gives each child a fresh set of short quests, written around their interests and the things they (and I) would like them to practice. The quests are written by AI (Claude, from Anthropic), but the AI doesn't start from nothing: it works from a library of about a hundred hand-picked starter ideas, the same ones you can browse in the activity library. Those ideas were chosen with one rule in mind: never make it feel like a worksheet.

About half of every day happens away from the screen on purpose. Chess, checkers, dominoes and the old table games we grew up with; a paper tower; a card trick; fifteen minutes outside. The app hands out the task and the kids tick it off afterwards. Points and a calendar of days played reward turning up, not being perfect, because the habit matters more than any single score.

Why the parent plays too

The early version handed the kids their quests and left me to check them off. But as I said above, what works at our house was never an app on its own: it was a parent sitting down with a good idea. So Tandomo changed direction. Now there is a together quest every day where the parent plays a real part — opponent, timer, teammate, the one who has to guess — and the rest are quests the kids can start on their own.

The quests practice four areas rather than school subjects: Thinking, Body, Heart and Voice. The parent page shows a simple skill map of the four. It's indicative, not a diagnosis: it reflects what we told the app and what the kids have played, nothing more.

The screen starts the quest and real life finishes it. Afterwards there's an optional photo for a family timeline only we can see, a companion that grows with minutes played and never loses anything, a reward shop of real-life rewards we agree on, and hugs and challenges that go both ways between parent and kid.

From 6 to 16, in three modes

My daughter has no patience for anything that looks like it was made for a younger child, so the app changes with age. Explorer (6–8) is short, playful and light on reading. Adventurer (9–11) has longer quests and more of them solo. Challenger (12–16) has a calmer, grown-up look and open challenges. Each child joins on their own phone or tablet with a family code and a PIN.

What the parent side is for

I wanted to play along and stay in the loop without hovering. The parent page shows today's together quest, what each child did and the notes they leave on quests — some of the best moments have been a short, slightly indignant note on a puzzle that turned out to be harder than it looked. Feedback on any quest (too easy, too hard, more like this) shapes the following days, so the app gets better at being for this particular kid.

What Tandomo is not

• It isn't a curriculum, and it doesn't replace school or teachers.
• It doesn't have ads, a feed, chat with strangers, or anything designed to keep kids scrolling.
• It doesn't make promises about grades, attention spans or anything else it can't honestly measure.

It works well enough at our house that I wanted to share it. If you'd like to see whether it works at yours, the quick quiz (about a minute) builds a free seven-day plan for your child, and the family account is free during early access. The FAQ answers the practical questions.