Narwello
Friendship starts with hello.
Your child wants friends and does not know the moves. Narwello teaches them, one a day: a short lesson, three small real-life quests, and Ellie, a coach your child can text or talk to. You get one email a day and can see everything.
- Ages 10–15, with or without a diagnosis
- Five minutes a day, eight weeks
- English and Russian, both complete
The problem
Your child wants friends. Nobody ever taught them the moves.
A twelve-year-old stands at the edge of the group at break. Not uninterested, and not fine alone — this child wants to be in there. They just do not know the moves: how to start, what to say second, how to join a conversation that is already running, what to do when they say something and nothing comes back.
The advice they get is “just be yourself” and “just go and talk to them”. Neither of those is a step. And the books that do contain the steps — Dale Carnegie’s, for one — are three hundred pages of adult prose. No tween is going to read them.
The skills themselves are teachable, and they are taught: one at a time, concretely, in evidence-based social-skills programmes for autistic teens. Those programmes are groups, in clinics, in one city, in one language, on a waiting list, at a price.
Narwello takes the same material and turns it into a five-minute habit on a phone — in the child’s own language, at home, at their own pace, on the days they have the energy for it.
“Just be yourself” is not a step.
The arc
From the edge of the yard to the middle of it
This is the whole point of eight weeks, in four pictures. Nobody turns into a different kid. The same kid learns the moves.
Week one. Wanting in, and not knowing the first move.
A hello that felt enormous. It counted.
A shared interest. The conversation runs on its own.
Week eight. Same kid, different afternoon.
Illustrations, not photographs of real children.
The daily loop
Five steps, every day, in the same order
Predictability beats delight. Nothing is timed, nothing counts down, and no step blocks the next one — the lesson is recommended, not a gate.
A lesson, 3 to 5 minutes
One idea per card: what the skill is, a short example dialogue, a “why this matters” story, and one thing to remember. Swipe through and you are done. No quiz, no score, no timer.
Three quests for the day
Small, concrete, real-life: “use one person’s name in a greeting”, “ask three classmates what they watched”, “give two specific compliments”. Every single quest ships with a comfort-mode version — the same skill with less exposure — and comfort mode earns exactly the same points.
An evening check-in
How did it go, what happened, how did you feel. Five mood tiles and a box for the child’s own words. “Nothing came back” is a valid, logged, complete answer — the quest still counts.
Points, streak, level
Points for what the child actually did and a streak for showing up. A missed day does not delete the programme: day 9 waits until they get there. There is no leaderboard and nobody to lose to.
An avatar and a room
Points are spent on clothes, hair and accessories for the avatar, and on furniture, plants and wallpaper for the avatar’s room. 80 avatar items and 50 room items, all drawn as flat vector art in the app’s own palette.
The coach
Ellie, the part kids actually come back for
Ellie is a narwhal: an older-sister figure, not a teacher and not a therapist. Kids text her or talk to her out loud, like a voice call. She knows today’s lesson and quests, so she coaches in the same words the app just used.
She answers the questions that actually come up: how do I say I was hurt, how do I ask someone to hang out, why did they go with someone else and not me. She role-plays the scary conversation before it happens, and she suggests the easier version of a quest when a check-in sounds overwhelmed.
She never shames, never demands eye contact, and treats needing a break as self-care rather than failure. Talking time has a daily cap, the same for every child, because the goal is friends at school, not more minutes with Ellie.
What Ellie never does
- Never shames, never scores the child’s personality, never pushes masking.
- Never keeps anything from the parent: every conversation is yours to read, and the daily summary comes without asking.
- Never handles a crisis alone: self-harm, abuse or bullying goes to the parent the moment it comes up.
Parents
You set it up. You see everything. You decide.
The parent creates the account, adds the child, and holds every setting. The child gets a coach and a programme. You get the whole picture, every day, without asking.
What you get
- One email a day: which lesson was done, which quests were completed or skipped, points and streak.
- Your child’s own notes from quests and the evening check-in, word for word.
- What came up with Ellie: the themes, what went well, what was hard, and one concrete thing to try tonight.
- The full text of every conversation with Ellie, whenever you want it, in the parent area behind your PIN.
What it is not
- Not a social network: no other users, no chat with strangers, no public profile, no feed.
- Not an AI companion: talking time is capped daily, and every quest sends the child towards real people.
- No ads, ever, and nothing about your child is sold to anyone.
Serious things reach you in minutes
If your child tells Ellie that someone is hurting them, that they want to hurt themselves, or that teasing has become bullying, you get an email straight away, with a short excerpt, what Ellie said back, and what to do next.
Your controls
- “Language, reminder time and report time.”
- “Voice on or off, and the daily talking cap.”
- “Full conversation history, export, and deletion of everything, any time.”
Your child practises. You stay in control.
The method
Where the material comes from
Nothing in the curriculum is invented advice. Every day maps to a named principle from a published source, and the map is in the repository.
Dale Carnegie, rewritten for a twelve-year-old
Genuine interest in other people, smiling, remembering and using names, listening, talking in terms of the other person’s interests, making people feel important sincerely, avoiding pointless arguments, admitting mistakes fast, seeing the other side, encouragement. Same principles, teen examples, one per day.
UCLA PEERS skills
PEERS is the best-evidenced social-skills curriculum for autistic teens, and it is concrete where Carnegie is philosophical. Narwello uses its moves: trading information, finding common interests, the five-step way into a group conversation, exiting kindly, handling teasing, handling disagreements, being a good sport, choosing friends who fit, planning a get-together.
Neurodiversity-affirming, throughout
Skills are tools, not a personality transplant. Eye contact is never demanded — the eyebrow trick is taught as fully valid, and deciding it is not for you is a stated valid result. Stims, fidgets and breaks are self-care. Masking is named as exhausting and is explicitly not the goal. Special interests are the bridge to friendship, not a habit to manage.
And the supporting tools
Light CBT for social worry (thoughts are not facts, brave-steps ladders, a coping card), social stories, self-advocacy scripts, and sensory self-care with a break signal agreed with a parent in week one.
What Narwello is not
- Not therapy, and not a replacement for a professional when one is needed.
- Not a diagnosis. Nothing in the app asks for one, and the child never sees clinical language.
- Not romantic-relationship coaching, ever. Every example is same-age friendship.
Where it sits
Not a chatbot, not a companion, not a course for therapists
There are AI coaches you can talk to, AI companions kids already talk to, and social-skills curricula sold to clinics. Narwello is deliberately none of those three, and here is where the line is drawn each time.
An AI social-skills coach
Open the app, describe a situation, get advice or a role-play. Useful in the moment, and over when you close it.
A programme with a coach inside it
Eight weeks of daily lessons and real-life quests give Ellie something to coach about. She knows today’s lesson and uses its words. The practice happens with real people at school; Ellie is the bridge, not the destination.
An AI companion
A friend-shaped chatbot that is always there, always agreeable, and built to keep the conversation going. Many autistic teens already use one, and the early research on what that does to loneliness is not reassuring.
The parent in charge, the child pointed outward
The parent sets it up, sees every conversation, and gets an alert within minutes if something serious comes up. Talking time is capped daily, and every quest sends the child towards a real person. Nothing in the app is designed to keep them talking to Ellie longer.
A curriculum for therapists
The best social-skills material for autistic teens is real and published — and delivered as clinic groups with waitlists, or as video libraries sold to schools and practices.
For the child, at home, in their language
The same published sources — Carnegie for teens, the UCLA PEERS skills, social stories, light CBT — reworked into two to four minutes a day that a twelve-year-old opens on their own. English or Russian. No clinician, classroom or waitlist required.
The interface
What it looks like
Three screens from the product: the child’s day, the voice chat with Ellie, and the parent’s daily report.
Today
Tuesday, 8 September
Week 2 · Day 2
Remember names
about 3 minutes
Quests for today
- Use one person’s name in a greeting1 / 1
- Ask 3 classmates about a movie1 / 3
- Say hello to someone newdone +20
Evening check-in
How did today go?
4 days in a row
I’m listening
Voice chat
What we said
- Ellie · That sounds like it stung.
- You · she didn’t even look at me
Tuesday, 8 September
Report
This is exactly what the email contains.
At a glance
Lesson
Day 9 ✓
Quests
2 of 3
Points
+85
Streak
5 days
Quests
✓ Ask 3 classmates about a movie · comfort mode
Note: “Asked one person, she likes the same show.”
– Say hello to someone new · skipped today
What Ellie noticed
Started a conversation today without being prompted, and it went better than expected. Being left out at lunch came up twice.
You could try tonight
Ask about lunch. Two minutes, no advice.
This is the summary. The full conversation is one tap away.
Made for one child first
Narwello started because one parent read Carnegie at twelve and watched his autistic daughter want exactly the same thing without a way in. Everything in it is built to be the thing she would actually open on a Tuesday evening — short, kind, predictable, and never once ashamed of her.
Want to know when it opens?
There is no signup, no beta and no store listing yet. When there is, you will get exactly one email about it.
Or write to us directly: oleksandr@netzet.com