The questions parents ask before enrolling, answered straight

We hear a handful of questions from nearly every parent before they enroll a kid. Most program websites answer them with marketing copy that technically responds to the question without actually answering it. Here's an attempt at the other kind of answer.

"Is this just more screen time?"

Partially, yes, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Kids are in front of screens for a meaningful chunk of most sessions — that's unavoidable for a program about building with AI and software. What we'd push back on is the assumption that all screen time is equivalent. There's a real difference between a kid passively consuming a feed and a kid actively building something that didn't exist an hour ago, debugging it, and shipping it. We're squarely in the second category. If your objection is to screens categorically, we're probably not the right fit, and we'd rather tell you that now than after you've paid for a session.

"Is my kid the right age?"

We serve 8 to 16, and within that range, what a kid actually does changes a lot by age — a mentor adjusts the activity and the level of direct AI access to the specific kid, not just a birthday cutoff. If your kid is right at either edge of the range, the honest answer is "probably, but talk to us first" rather than a confident yes or no from a webpage that's never met your kid.

"What does it actually cost, and is there a cheaper option?"

Full pricing, including the free tier, is at /pricing — we're not going to bury the number behind a "contact us for a quote," because that's a tactic and we don't like being on the receiving end of it either. If cost is the actual blocker, look at the free printable library first: it's the same activities, on a delay, at no cost, and it's a legitimate way to see if this is a fit for your kid before spending anything.

"What happens if my kid hates it?"

Some kids do. Not every kid wants to build things instead of consuming them, and that's a real mismatch, not a failure on anyone's part. We'd rather you know that going in than have us oversell "every kid loves this." If your kid tries a single session or a party and it's clearly not their thing, that's useful information, cheaply gained — better to learn it in one afternoon than three months into a membership.

"Are the mentors actually vetted?"

Yes — background-checked, and the space is insured the way any program working with minors has to be. Full detail is at /safety. We'd rather point you at the actual policy page than summarize it reassuringly here, because a summary is exactly the kind of thing that's easy to write vaguely and hard to verify.

"Is this going to turn my kid into someone who can't function without AI?"

This is the question underneath a lot of the others, even when it's not asked directly, and it deserves a direct answer: we think the opposite risk is bigger. A kid who's never build anything with these tools and only ever consumes AI-generated output — that's the kid at risk of losing the judgment to evaluate what a model gives them. Building with AI, debugging its mistakes, arguing with a teammate about whether a model's answer is actually right — that's what produces the skepticism and capability we'd want any kid to have around a technology this new. We've written about the version of this we explicitly rejected — an AI that acts like a friend, that a kid becomes dependent on. That's not what happens in our room, on purpose.

The one we can't answer for you

"Is this worth it for my specific kid?" We can't answer that from a blog post. That one's genuinely yours to figure out, and the cheapest way to start is the free printable library or a single party or camp session — not a longer conversation with us, an actual afternoon with the thing itself.