Passive consumption
Active growth
Learning, reading, movement, creativity, and real responsibility become visible parts of a child's digital life.
Octo TeacherOPEN SOURCE FAMILY TECHNOLOGY
Octo Teacher
We are building a future where a child's phone is no longer mainly an entertainment machine. It becomes a tool for learning, creativity, movement, responsibility, and human growth.
Octo Teacher connects real-world progress with healthy digital choice. Children earn bounded access through meaningful action, families replace daily conflict with clear agreements, and an open-source community can improve the model for children everywhere.
A phone can teachReframe the most influential device in childhood
Growth earns choiceBuild agency instead of dependence
Open to the worldA public system families can inspect and improve
THE BIG IDEA
Change what childhood screens are for.
Billions of childhood hours are being shaped by devices optimized to hold attention. Our ambition is to redirect that force: to make the phone a daily companion for curiosity, capability, health, contribution, and self-direction.
This is bigger than parental control. Octo Teacher imagines a new category of technology in which digital access supports development rather than competing with it. The long-term goal is to help change how children around the world use phones, how families talk about technology, and what the technology industry chooses to optimize for.
From attention extraction to human development.One family at a time, built openly enough to travel much further.
Endless entertainment
Earned recreation
Entertainment is not treated as forbidden. It becomes a healthy choice unlocked by meaningful effort and bounded by clear family rules.
Daily negotiation
Shared agreements
Parents set the boundaries, children understand the path, and the system applies the same transparent rules every day.
Screen time
Growth time
The question changes from how long a child used a phone to what that powerful device helped the child become.
WHY OPEN SOURCE
A mission this important should be built in public.
Technology that shapes children should not be a black box. Families, educators, researchers, designers, and developers should be able to question its assumptions, inspect its safeguards, test its effects, and improve it together.
Apple-native controls
FamilyControls, ManagedSettings, and DeviceActivity provide the enforcement layer on supported Apple devices.
Earned access
Children complete meaningful activities, earn growth points, and exchange them for bounded app-access windows.
A shared family system
Guardians, child devices, tasks, rewards, and activity summaries are coordinated through one privacy-conscious family model.
ONE REPOSITORY, FOUR SURFACES
Designed as a complete family loop.
The project combines device enforcement, guardian control, cloud coordination, and evidence-based development.
iOS app
SwiftUI, Screen Time extensions, local-first child and guardian experiences
Platform API
TypeScript services for identity, family sync, policy commands, and audit trails
Family Console
A separate guardian-facing web console for family operations and summaries
Postgres
Durable family state with scoped sessions, migrations, and row-level boundaries
PROJECT REALITY
Useful today. Still experimental.
Octo Teacher is working software under active development, not a finished parental-control product.
ImplementedFamily identity, device binding, task and point sync, Screen Time policy flows, and a guardian web console.
In progressMore reliable cross-device rule delivery, per-app activity summaries, onboarding, and migration paths for older clients.
Developer noteApple Screen Time capabilities require supported devices, entitlements, and real-device validation. Simulator-only results are not enough.
LM
FOUNDER AND MAINTAINER
Leo Ma
I want to contribute to American society by helping families raise more curious, capable, healthy, and responsible children.
America's future depends on people who can learn independently, create boldly, care for their communities, and use freedom with responsibility. If phones now shape a large part of childhood, then those devices should help cultivate these qualities instead of steadily weakening them.
Octo Teacher is my attempt to turn that belief into practical public infrastructure. I am opening the work because the problem is larger than one family, one company, or one developer. I hope families and builders across America can help prove a healthier model, then share it with the world.
Build technology that leaves children stronger than it found them.
A PUBLIC CONVERSATION
Leave a note for Leo.
Share a reaction, a hard question, or an idea for where Octo Teacher should go next. No account is required.
BUILD IT WITH US
Help build a healthier relationship between childhood and technology.
Families, educators, child-development researchers, designers, privacy advocates, and engineers all have something essential to contribute. Bring your experience, your scrutiny, and your willingness to test the idea in the real world.