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AI & EducationLIVE
COBO
A screen-free reading companion: the camera sees the page, the AI reads it aloud.
I built CoBo as engineering partner for a funded startup ($1M SAFE, $6M cap): a screen-free Vision-AI companion that narrates physical books to kids and answers their questions. One Expo codebase ships iOS, Android, and a web app for parents, teachers, and school admins; a Go backend drives the photo-to-narration pipeline in under 2.5 seconds; a 7-layer child-safety system guards every session. In production at coboread.com.
- Client
- CoBo
- Role
- Engineering Partner
- Timeline
- 2025 — Present
FUNDED STARTUP
- Commits
- 1,300
- DB migrations
- 68
- Photo to narration
- <2.5s
- Child-safety layers
- 7
The Challenge
A funded startup ($1M SAFE on a $6M cap) had a promise to keep: a screen-free device that reads any physical book to a child and answers questions about it. That means the camera has to see the page, the AI has to read it accurately enough for a five-year-old, and the whole system has to be safe enough for a kid to use alone. It also had to ship as phone apps for parents and a web app for schools before the hardware itself existed.
The Solution
I built the product as engineering partner across three fronts. One Expo/React Native codebase ships iOS, Android, and web, with roles for parents, teachers, and school admins. The Go backend drives a pipeline through OpenRouter, Whisper, and Google TTS that turns a photographed page into narration in under 2.5 seconds, backed by a global narration cache shared across families. Safety is architectural, not a filter bolted on: a 7-layer system called Sovereign Shield, with crisis detection that pauses the session and alerts the parent. Stripe handles family subscriptions and Net-30 school invoicing, and I wrote the C reference SDK with ES256 device attestation so firmware development could start before any hardware existed.
The Outcome
CoBo is in production at coboread.com, 1,300 commits and 68 migrations in. Families use the apps today, schools pilot the admin tools, and the hardware program has a working SDK to build against. The cache means the thousandth reading of a popular book costs a fraction of the first, and the safety system has held under real children doing real child things to it.
Highlights
- One Expo/React Native codebase ships iOS, Android, and web apps for parents, teachers, and school admins
- Vision pipeline (OpenRouter + Whisper + Google TTS) narrates a photographed page in under 2.5 seconds
- Sovereign Shield: a 7-layer child-safety system whose crisis detection pauses sessions and alerts parents
- Global narration cache shared across families, so popular books return instantly and cost less to serve
- Stripe subscriptions for families plus Net-30 invoicing for schools, from the same billing core
- C reference SDK with ES256 device attestation, so firmware work started before the hardware existed
Technology
ExpoReact NativeGoOpenRouterStripe
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