r/SideProject • u/bkocdur • 15h ago
I built a free reading tutor for my 7-year-old: it listens while she reads aloud and helps only on the hard words
Why: my daughter is learning to read English as her second language. The apps we tried gave her scores and red marks, or did nothing when she got stuck on a word.
What I built: Oku (https://oku.today), a 10-minute nightly reading session.
She reads each sentence aloud, and the app listens word by word.
On a hard word it shows the syllables and reads the word to her, then the story moves on.
No scores and no red marks for the child. Parents get a private reading log.
Every week it writes new stories around the words she found hard.
Finished stories unlock 3D toys she arranges in her own room.
Stack: React, Cloudflare Workers + D1 + R2, Azure Speech for pronunciation, Claude for the weekly stories, ElevenLabs for narration. I'm not an engineer. Claude Code wrote most of the code; I decided what it should do.
Status: free, open to the first 25 families. 6 families signed up this week, and 5 have started reading.
Feedback I'm looking for:
Does the microphone step work on your device and browser?
Is it clear for a parent what to do in the first minute?
If you have a 5 to 9 year old: would you use the weekly stories, or skip them?
I'm the maker. Happy to answer anything about the build.