Shape the software itself.
Most families never need this page. Using the tools as they are, or swapping in your own photos and words, is a complete and first-class path. This is for the parents and helpers who want to go one step further and reshape the tools themselves.
You don't have to be a programmer.
This is the part we're most excited about: with today's AI coding assistants, you can reshape these tools around your child without writing code by hand.
Point Claude Code, Codex, or any AI agent at our repositories and describe the change you want in plain English. Then test it with your kid; they're the only reviewer who counts. Our own rule is to verify changes with the child rather than trust them sight unseen, and we'd ask you to do the same.
The repos are written to be read by an agent
Each repository carries a plain-text guide file (named AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md) that tells an AI agent how the project is laid out, how to run it, and what not to break. You point your agent at the repository, and that file gives it the orientation it needs to make a careful change.
Everything is open source, under MPL-2.0.
Each tool lives in its own repository so you can take only the piece you want to change. Links go live as each repo is opened to the public.
era-gaze
The Gaze Layer: the steady, gentle cursor the other tools stand on.
era-board
The Morning Outfit Picker and the daily choice boards behind it.
era-pencil
The Pencil: free writing with an alphabet ring and word prediction.
era-making-words
Making Words: the guided word-building lessons.
era-core
Shared building blocks the tools have in common.
era-hub
The local runtime that serves the installed tools on your own machine.
More repositories join this list as tools like Book Reader come out of the workshop.
Pull requests welcome. Here's the honest deal.
We'd love your ideas, your fixes, and someday your own tools in this collection. We also want to be straight about how contributions are handled, so nobody feels strung along.
- Contributions are genuinely welcome, whether that's a bug fix, a new lesson, or a whole new tool.
- Review is not guaranteed. This is a nights-and-weekends project, so a pull request may sit for a while, and that is not a judgment on your work.
There are three honest outcomes for any change you send:
Merged
The change fits the project and gets folded into the main tools, so every family benefits from it.
Community
The change is worth sharing but sits outside the core. It lives on as a community contribution others can find and use.
Independent fork
The change takes the tool somewhere of its own. Under MPL-2.0 you are free to carry it forward as your own fork. The New ERA name and logo stay with this project, so a fork travels under its own name.
MPL-2.0 for the code.
The software is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0: free to use, inspect, change, and share, with changes to the shared files staying open. The writing on this site is shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The New ERA name and logo stay with the project so a broken fork can't wear them.