Why we built Lumi

My son Remi is five. He's fast — when he locks onto a thing he wants to learn, the lesson can't keep up. Lexia at school does what it does well, but the path is fixed. Each new sound waits for the average; Remi reads the page and waits with it.

I wanted a tutor that could listen — actually hear when he was bored, hear when he wasn't sure, hear when he was guessing — and adjust. Not a quiz that asks the same question with louder graphics. A tutor.

So I started Lumi.

What the science says

The Science of Reading is unambiguous about one thing: kids learn to read by mastering the alphabetic code. Phonemic awareness, then phonics, then word recognition, then automaticity, then comprehension. UFLI Foundations, Heggerty, and decades of structured-literacy work all sit on top of that ordering.

Lumi follows it. Level 5 — where we start — covers short vowels, CVC words, and the first 27 heart words. Levels 6 through 12 add digraphs, magic-e, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, diphthongs, multi-syllable words, and prefixes and suffixes in that order. Nothing introduced before its prerequisites.

What Lumi adds is the pace. A child who blends "cat" on the first try isn't asked to blend it nine more times. A child who hesitates on "ship" gets a slower model, a re-prompt, and another chance — not a red X and a try-again screen.

Why voice-first

Most "AI tutors" for kids are text apps with a TTS button bolted on. The kid sees a screen. The voice is decoration.

Lumi reverses that. The child hears Lumi first, then sees what to tap. The mascot speaks short, calm sentences — never more than twelve words. There are no exclamation marks except in a speech bubble. There are no emoji in what the tutor says aloud. The interface is the smallest thing on the screen.

This matters because pre-readers learn through sound. A reading tutor that requires reading instructions has already lost.

What we don't do

• No ads. Ever.
• No social. No chat, no other kids, no "friend" feature.
• No AI training on a child's data. What your kid says to Lumi belongs to your kid.
• No replacing the adult. We email parents a weekly recap and surface a daily moment of growth. The goal is to give parents better questions to ask at dinner, not less time with their kids.

The honest tradeoffs

Lumi runs on Claude for the tutor logic, ElevenLabs for the voice. It costs us money every time a child plays. We pay for it because we believe reading should be a right, not a paywall.

We will eventually offer schools a paid tier. Families always get the full Lumi free.

The road ahead

Levels 6 through 12 are written and shipping as your child masters each prior level. Math is here too — counting, comparing, addition, shapes, place value, multiplication, and fractions through M6. A microphone-based mode for reading aloud is in the queue.

If you have a Remi at home — a kid who is faster than the lesson, or slower than the lesson, or both depending on the day — try Lumi. Tell us what breaks. We'll fix it on the speed of your child.

— Tim