Press and pitch
The short version, with the numbers
Everything on this page is checkable against the repository. Where something is a plan rather than a fact, it says so.
One line
Narwello is a bilingual daily friendship-skills app for neurodivergent tweens, built around an eight-week programme and a narwhal coach you talk to out loud, hands-free.
Twenty-five words
An eight-week friendship course for neurodivergent 10–15s: a five-minute daily lesson, three real-life quests, and a live hands-free AI coach. English and Russian.
Boilerplate
Narwello turns Dale Carnegie’s principles and UCLA PEERS social-skills material into a daily habit for neurodivergent tweens: a three-minute lesson, three small real-life quests with a comfort-mode alternative for each, an evening check-in, and points that buy an avatar and a room. Ellie, a narwhal, coaches in text or in a live hands-free voice conversation. Parents get one summary email a day and immediate alerts on safety-critical topics — and the child is shown exactly what is shared before saying a word. English and Russian, Android first. In development.
The numbers
Programme
| Weeks / days | 8 / 56, in fixed order |
|---|---|
| Quests | 168 — exactly three per day |
| Comfort-mode alternatives | 168 — one per quest, same points |
| Lesson length | 3–5 minutes, ~300–400 words |
| Quests involving the coach | 54 (32%) |
| Quests involving a parent or trusted adult | 29 (17%) |
| Points across the programme | 5,040 |
App content
| Achievements | 30 |
|---|---|
| Avatar items | 80 drawings, eight tints on every colourable garment |
| Room items | 50, on a placement grid |
| Languages | 2 — English and Russian, written as parallel originals |
| Raster assets | 0 — the mascot, the avatar and the room are all vector, drawn from data |
Build
| App | Expo / React Native, TypeScript, Android first |
|---|---|
| Backend | NestJS, PostgreSQL, Drizzle, socket.io, self-hosted |
| Voice round trip | Deepgram live STT → Claude → ElevenLabs streaming TTS, over one WebSocket |
| Voice interaction | Continuously open mic with barge-in. No push-to-talk anywhere |
Status, honestly
- DoneThe eight-week curriculum: 56 day files in both languages, validated by a build script. The UX specification, the architecture, the design tokens and the mascot art system.
- DoneBackend foundations: the NestJS skeleton, the full database schema and its first migration, typed API and socket contracts, health checks and local Postgres, all verified running.
- In progressThe feature modules behind those contracts — auth, content, quests, the coach gateway, the report job — and this marketing site.
- Not startedThe mobile app itself beyond shared contracts. No build, no beta, no store listing, no users.
What makes it different
The voice mode has no button
Most “AI voice” in kids’ apps is push-to-talk with a microphone icon. Narwello’s is a continuously open mic with interruption, because the skill being practised is talking to a person, and a person does not require you to hold a button.
The parent report is transparent in both directions
A daily summary by default, the full conversation on request, and the child is shown that contract before the first message. It is not a monitoring app: what the parent sees is what happens inside Narwello, and the child knows it.
Comfort mode is not a lesser path
Every quest has an easier version worth identical points. The economy is deliberately built so that choosing safety is never punished.
A programme, not a chatbot
The nearest neighbours are AI coaches you talk to and AI companions kids already talk to. Narwello puts the coach inside an eight-week programme of lessons and real-life quests, tells the child exactly what the parent sees, and points every quest at a real person. No competitor found combines a friendship programme for neurodivergent tweens, a live voice coach, a game economy and a bounded parent report; in Russian there is nothing comparable at all.
Bilingual from the first line
Not a translation layer bolted on later. Every lesson, quest, coach reply and parent email exists in English and Russian as parallel originals, and the build fails if a string is missing.
What is deliberately not claimed
- No clinical validation, no trial, no outcome data. The method is published; the app is not evidence.
- No medical or diagnostic claims of any kind.
- No user numbers, no downloads, no revenue — there is no product in anyone’s hands yet.
- No testimonials on this site. There are no users to quote, so there are no quotes.
Contact
Founder and sole builder: Oleksandr Antonenko. For interviews, questions, a longer walkthrough, or the specification documents behind every number on this page:
Assets
The wordmark and the mascot are vector and live in this repository as data — the narwhal in the browser tab is drawn from the very same file the app renders. Ask and you get the SVGs and the palette.