Every practice app
Asks the kid a question, marks it right or wrong, hands out points. The kid performs French for the app. The app is the teacher, again.
For French-immersion families in Canada Pour les familles en immersion
A world where your kid does things in French.
Caribou is a small painted valley that lives on an iPhone. Five buildings open onto real rooms, the residents have real jobs, and French is the tool that gets the work done. Not a quiz with a mascot.
Join the waitlist
Founding families first · iPhone · Built in the open, judged on a real phone
Le pari · The bet
Immersion kids get quizzed at home. French is never load-bearing.
Several hundred thousand Canadian families have a child in French immersion while the parents speak no French. School delivers plenty of input. Home delivers almost no supported output, which is the one skill immersion under-serves.
Caribou’s bet
Gives the kid a job inside a world. Handing the baker a tray, placing the blue book on the table, telling the fisherman why the lantern stays lit. The French does work. Getting it wrong has story consequences, not red X’s.
Un acte · How one act works
The act carries the judgment.
In the bakery, Armand needs the tray of dough on the oven rack. Your kid measures the flour, works the dough, walks the caribou across the room and hands the tray over. Armand alone handles the heat. Every instruction is French, spoken and written.
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1
A resident with a real need
Armand, the baker, has bread to make and a rule about the oven. Not a question with four answers. A job, with a place in the room where it happens.
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2
French, for a reason
The request is French the child has to understand to act: « Confie le plateau à Armand. Lui seul s’occupe du four. » Replay it, or open the full instruction, as often as you like.
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3
Hands on, in the world
Carry the tray. An amber ring on the floor marks where it goes. Reach and placement are checked by the room, not by a tap on a card. Getting it wrong just means trying again.
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4
The place reacts, truthfully
Armand takes the tray, carries it down the aisle, slides it into the oven and steps aside. Later the bread cools and you collect it. Practice is practice; it is never a claim that something is mastered.
Captures from the development build of 5 September 2026 · dev preview
Une semaine · One week with Caribou
One real school target in. One honest receipt out.
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Sunday · 2 min
Tell Caribou what school is working on
Type it, or photograph the sheet the teacher sent home; the text is read on the phone. You confirm the target yourself. That is the parent’s entire setup.
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Mon to Thu · short sessions
Jobs in the valley, and the school workshop
Rooms with real tasks, a story on the river, and three workshop activities built from the week’s target, narrated in French. Speaking is optional and recognised on the phone.
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Any evening · 60 seconds
A receipt you can actually read
What your child did, the help they used, and when. No grades, no percentages, no “falling behind”. You need zero French to understand it.
La vallée · The valley
Five buildings. Five different kinds of French.
One valley you walk through. Each building opens onto a full-size room with its own resident and its own job, so the same quiz never shows up in a different costume.
La bibliothèque
Carry, place, open. Books with real story pictures inside; Jonas the carpenter and Mina the keeper have jobs for you.
L’école
The weekly workshop: your child’s real school targets, narrated in French, and a miniature village to arrange.
La boulangerie
Flour, dough, oven. Armand alone handles the heat; you bring the tray and collect the bread.
Le café
Trays, milk, orders. The host keeps the exchange moving and the service register honest.
La cabane
Watering, a cart wheel to repair, a hearth. The quiet place where the retelling happens.
Au-delà des maisons · And beyond the buildings
A river with a story on it. A fire world. Spells you say out loud.
- La rivière des contes. Board the fisherman’s boat and travel a performed story, with illustrated banks, narration and a question your child answers by voice.
- Trente-six sorts. Spoken spells in twelve families: « fais tomber la pluie » and the rain falls. Recognised on the phone, with an explicit mic.
- Les petites courses. Five outings with French directions, replay and a small map, so “à gauche” has a consequence.
- La Braise. A lava world crossed on stepping stones, with checkpoints and a forge that changes when you get there.
- Trente et un objets to find, weather that reacts, butterflies, and a valley that winters when a child is away. It never damages it.
The valley, butterflies · dev preview
Ce qu’on ne fera pas · The no-list
Everything you’d want. Nothing you’d worry about.
Most of these are not features we skipped. They are decisions we wrote down so a future version of us cannot quietly undo them.
French-only on the child’s screen
Zero French required of you
Speech is recognised on the phone
Residents never guilt-trip
no.
- no streaks
- no leaderboards
- no XP, no leagues
- no ads
- no open chat with an AI
- no video feed
- no English on the child’s surface
- no “your child is falling behind”
- no shop, no timers
- no raw voice audio leaving the phone
Pour les parents · For parents
You are the audience, never the tutor.
You cannot help with the homework, you cannot judge the progress, and you cannot get your kid to practise speaking. That is the actual experience in most immersion homes, and it is not your fault.
Caribou asks you for two minutes on Sunday and nothing during the week. L’Espace parent is bilingual with a visible English/French toggle, because consent and safety copy should never be a guess.
- A receipt that shows the actual work: the target, what your child did, the help they used, the date. No percentages, no rankings.
- Consent is a real gate, per child. The microphone and any reply feature stay off until you switch them on, and you can switch them off again.
- Privacy under Quebec’s Law 25 and PIPEDA. Speech recognition runs on the phone. Raw audio never leaves it. Saved work stays on the device.
Où on en est · Where this is, honestly
Being built in the open, judged on a real phone.
Updated 6 September 2026. Build 905.16.01 was installed on an iPhone 17 Pro the evening before; 905.17.01 is built and waiting for the phone. Every item below is either on that device or named as not claimed.
Real today
- Five buildings with full-size rooms and hands-on jobs: the library (carry, place, open books), the school (miniature village and the weekly workshop), the bakery (flour, dough, Armand at the oven), the café (trays and milk) and the cabane (watering, a cart-wheel repair).
- The river story: a performed episode on the water with the fisherman, illustrated banks, narration, boarding and return, and a question answered by voice.
- Thirty-six spoken spells in twelve families with on-device recognition, five Directions outings with French audio and a small map, and a first crossing of the lava world.
- The Ontario French Immersion Grade 5 school workshop: the parent types or photographs a school target, confirms it, and the child gets three narrated activities per target with saved work and a parent receipt. Grade 4 is authorised and in progress.
- L’Espace parent: profiles, session length, per-child voice and privacy consent, and learning receipts, in English and French.
- Every slice is built by one agent and judged adversarially by another before it is integrated. That process has already caught features that only worked in a demo.
Not claimed yet
- No proven learning gains. The founding-family cohort is the experiment, with a pre-registered plan and a consented teacher review of the workshop.
- Not on the App Store. iPhone only, small groups of families, by TestFlight invitation from the waitlist.
- Room progress currently lasts a visit, not an app restart. Making consequences survive coming back is the next engineering phase.
- Speech recognition is limited to known targets. Free-form understanding of a child’s speech is not promised. Story replies from a language model exist for the founder only, send recognised text rather than audio, and need separate consent.
- Ages 6 to 12 first, Ontario Grade 4 and 5 targets first. An older “Nord” track for 12 to 17 is designed and waits for evidence.
- Weather, butterflies, dancing and the fisherman’s motion are first-pass craft, judged on the phone but not yet approved by a child.
Questions · Questions you might have
Questions, answered plainly.
What even is Caribou?
A native iPhone app for children in Canadian French immersion. On the phone it is a small painted valley with five buildings you walk into, a river with a story on it, a fire world, and residents who have real jobs. Your child does those jobs in French: handing the baker a tray, placing books for the carpenter, telling the fisherman why the lantern matters. Under the hood it is a pushed-output engine: the child understands, acts, speaks when they choose to, and the world responds. The world is the reason to come back; the outcome is school-linked French.
Who is it for?
First, kids roughly 6 to 12 in French immersion, and their English-speaking parents. The school workshop starts with Ontario French Immersion Grade 4 and 5 targets, and the valley itself needs no grade at all. If you have ever stared at a French homework sheet and felt useless, this was designed for your kitchen table.
Do I need to speak French?
No. Not a word. Your job is two minutes on Sunday and a receipt you can read whenever you like. Everything the parent sees is bilingual with a visible toggle. Everything the child sees is French only, because that is the number one thing immersion teachers trust.
Is it a game? Will it hook my kid?
It is a world, and worlds are engaging. But we refuse the slot-machine layer on purpose: no streaks, no leaderboards, no XP, no speed rewards, nothing where another child’s number can exceed yours. Progress shows up as what your child can do and say, and as objects found in the valley that are never taken away. If it stops being about the French, we cut it.
What happens to my child’s voice?
Speech recognition happens on the phone. Raw audio does not travel to our servers. Consent starts off and is a real gate per child: the microphone is disabled without it. One optional feature, story replies on the river, sends the recognised text of an answer to get a reply in context; it needs its own consent switch, and today it is only enabled for the founder’s own testing. This is our Law 25 and PIPEDA posture, not a marketing line.
When can we try it?
We are inviting founding families in small groups, iPhone first, starting this school year, through TestFlight. Join the waitlist, tell us your province and your child’s grade, and bring one real school target when your turn comes. We reply personally; there is no newsletter.
La liste · The founding-family waitlist
Bring one real school target.
We are looking for families who want to shape this with us: a few weeks of real use, a short debrief, honest feedback. In return, you go first, and the valley is built around the French your child actually needs this week.
- Small groups, in the order families joined
- iPhone, by TestFlight invitation
- A personal reply, never a newsletter
Takes about a minute. We only ask for what we need to invite you.