// The Collection · beta
Static book libraries can’t meet every kid where they are. StorySpark generates unique stories, with AI illustrations, calibrated to each child’s age, reading level, and interests, for readers 4–16.
The problem
A 6-year-old and a 14-year-old don’t need the same book; neither does the same kid 6 months later. Parents get no say over what generative AI puts in front of their kids, and teachers get nothing built for a whole classroom.
What it does
A full reading platform, not a story generator bolted to a chat box. Claude Sonnet 4.6 writes each story live over SSE streaming; Gemini 2.5 Flash illustrates it in 1 of 7 styles, watercolor to anime. Two reading modes, auto-selected by age: Storybook (page-by-page, full-bleed illustrations, ages 4–9) and Scroll (long-form, ages 10–16). Reading earns XP, levels, streaks, and bronze/silver/gold achievements, plus parent-defined rewards.
- Parents: granular, audit-logged controls per child: blocked themes, daily story limits, allowed reading hours, prompt-approval mode, 3 safety levels. Kids log in with a 6-digit passcode, no email.
- Schools: teachers run classes, per-student reading goals, and curated prompt libraries; school admins set content policies and bulk-create students with printable PDF passcode sheets.
- Offline: installable PWA; cached stories read without a connection.
- Laravel 13
- Livewire 4
- FrankenPHP · Octane
- PostgreSQL 16
- Claude Sonnet 4.6
- Gemini 2.5 Flash
Receipts
Live in beta at storyspark.randomsynergy.xyz: v0.23.0, registration open. Under the hood: Laravel 13 on FrankenPHP + Octane in worker mode, Livewire 4, PostgreSQL 16, Redis 7. It runs to 177 PHP files, 54 migrations, ~40 tables, 5 user roles. Billing runs on Stripe (Laravel Cashier): free tier at 3 stories/day, paid plans to $29.99/mo, school plans from $49.99/mo. Before beta, a multi-agent security audit surfaced ~84 findings; I shipped the fixes: IDOR patches, a child-auth session-fixation fix, prompt-injection fencing on everything sent to Claude and Gemini. COPPA consent is enforced at registration. The repo is private.
Outcome
A ground-up rebuild of the vanilla-PHP original (shipped Jan–Feb 2026) onto Laravel and PostgreSQL, for scale and to enter the education market. Part of The Collection: prove it cheaply in beta, graduate what works.
Links: Live beta