Genkan: kids earn their screen time
Genkan is a self-hosted family internet gateway with a twist: instead of only blocking, it makes kids earn their screen time by learning. It runs on a spare computer in the home, filters by age, and meters only the time-wasters - games and endless video - while music, homework and chatting to Mum and Dad stay free and untimed. When the time runs out, kids get a friendly "here's how to earn more" screen, not a dead connection. Built in three days, open source under MIT, and the family's data never leaves the house. Named for the genkan: the entryway of a Japanese home where you leave the outside world at the door.
Every parental-control tool blocks. Genkan's different idea is that kids earn their screen time by learning. Answer a few curriculum-aligned questions, do a chore, and minutes appear. It turns the daily fight over devices into something closer to pocket money: effort first, then play.
And it only counts what matters. Games and doom-scrolling are metered against a daily budget; music, homework and messaging the family are never timed. A kid can sing along to Spotify all afternoon and it costs them nothing.
Genkan runs on the family's own hardware and nothing ever leaves the house - no cloud, no accounts, no telemetry. It is built to be open with kids, not to spy on them: age-appropriate filtering, SafeSearch, and a light touch that loosens as they grow up. Youth help lines are never blocked, even when a child is out of time.
The whole thing is open source under MIT at github.com/0800tim/genkan, so any parent can run it, read exactly what it does, and trust it.
When a kid runs out of time, Genkan does not just cut them off - it shows them the way back.
Time's up, gently
Instead of pages failing silently, the device shows a friendly screen: you've used today's minutes, here's how to earn more.
Learn or help out
A quick curriculum quiz, a chore, or a study task earns minutes back - effort converts straight into screen time.
Parents stay in control
Grant bonus time with a tap, kill gaming while leaving homework and music on, or pause everything for dinner - from your phone, in plain words.
They learn to hack it, on purpose
A built-in household bug bounty rewards kids for finding a way around the rules and showing you how - turning the arms race into a real lesson in how networks work.
The same machinery, pointed at your business
Self-hosted apps we build for you
Runs on hardware you own, no per-seat SaaS fees, data that stays yours - the same approach we bring to client tools.
AI-assisted delivery, fast
A working product in three days is our AI-first process run on our own brand - the same speed we quote for client work.
Hosting and operations
We run it on our own infrastructure with monitoring and clean deploys.
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