Introducing Scribblins: A Creative Co-Play Experience for You & Your Kids

My new app, Scribblins, is now available in beta on the Apple, Google Play, and Amazon App stores

If you’re a parent of a 5-10-year-old kid, you can now try out Scribblins, a new audio-first, co-play experience that uses AI to turn your child’s real artwork into characters, stories, and stickers.

It is available in beta on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Amazon App Store for Fire tablets.

Here’s how it works:

1. Snap a photo of your child’s drawing or art project.
   

2. Talk with Trace the Scribblin (a playful “learning robot”) to tell stories and play games through two creative builds to remix the art with AI-enhanced imagery.
   

3. Download or order printed stickers of your final creations, mailed right to you.

Starting from a child’s real artwork, kids talk with Trace to name characters, build stories in real time, and stretch their imagination through play.

What surprised me most is that the audio storytelling (originally a way to pass time while images generated) now feels more important than the sticker itself. It’s kind of like playing improv with an AI that’s always ready to say, “Yes, and…”

My favorite part is watching kids realize that something they made offline can be extended with technology and turned into something new. To me, this is the first step toward seeing yourself as a creator (vs. just a consumer) of technology.

Scribblins is very much a v1 and still in beta. I’m sharing it now because I believe in building in public and because I’d genuinely love feedback from fellow parents (and your kids).

If you give it a try, let me know what you think at scribblins@buildfirst.ai.

The rest of this post is a storytelling narrative about why I built Scribblins. Feel free to skip ahead (or just ask your AI to summarize it for you).

After starting my own AI builder journey, I realized the thing I care about most isn’t whether my kids know how to use technology, but whether they know how to create with it. Less passive entertainment, more LEGO bricks.

For that to happen, kids need to learn early that technology can build on top of things they already make in the real world: drawings, stories, inventions, ideas. It also felt important to me (and other parents I spoke with) that AI experiences weren’t isolated and unsupervised, but collaborative, contained, and productive.

Scribblins is my first attempt at showing that feedback loop in action.

Today, most AI image generators start with text prompts that invent images from scratch. Scribblins starts with the kid. Any crayon drawing or whiteboard scribble becomes a named character with a story (and, if you want, a sticker sheet as a keepsake).

In other words: The imagination stays with the child; the technology just stretches it.

We don’t yet have clear, universal guardrails for kids and AI, but I’m not waiting for big tech to figure it out. Like it or not, my kids are already growing up with Alexa in every room of the house. (Yours probably are, too.)

That’s why, in our family, we treat AI the same way we teach street smarts. As native New Yorkers, our kids know they aren’t allowed to cross the street alone yet. But we take them outside every day, and they’ve crossed the street thousands of times (while holding a grown-up’s hand).

In essence, they are learning the rules by practicing (with supervision) in the real world. While we can’t control every street corner, we can choose which neighborhoods to bring them into and help them recognize tricky situations along the way.

I think about using AI with my kids the same way. Scribblins isn’t a private babysitter or a secret AI companion. It’s a speakerphone-on, collaborative story game.

Today, it’s built as a relatively contained experience that lasts about as long as an episode of Bluey. By design, you can’t stray too far from the script, and Trace the narrator redirects conversations or image suggestions that incorporate inappropriate themes.

Over time, I want it to feel more episodic and story-driven, but the core idea stays the same: Kids learn how AI fits into their lives in a bounded, collaborative environment. (One where grown-ups are present, too.)

Over the summer, I worked with Harlem Link Charter School on a 4-week pilot program to introduce the building blocks of AI literacy to a summer school class of 8-year-olds.

One activity involved taking art from kids and turning it into real-time characters. (This ended up being their favorite part.) Six weeks later, we had a prototype of Scribblins live in the App Store. To me, this felt like a really cool way to build alongside the target end users, and I intend to do more of it this year.

Since this app was born in a classroom, I’m continuing to iterate on it with real feedback from current students, teachers, and parents. I’ve already brought Scribblins to my daughter’s kindergarten class, and we’ve got another pilot in the works that features first grader builders and middle school QA testers (with teacher supervision).

If AI moves as fast this year as it did last year, there’s no telling what the world will look like by December. Scribblins is my way of staying actively a part of this conversation, throughout all of the twists and turns of the technology and the new-age learning environments it enables.

If you’re interested in learning alongside me, you can download Scribblins and play with it alongside your kids. Share any feedback or ideas with me at scribblins@buildfirst.ai.

Scribblins is the second project that’s part of the Build First studio. Special thanks to Matt Hamilton, the founder of Toy Boat, for working with me last summer as an early design partner on this experiment. And thanks to JY Lee, who helped with our first round of app updates to get it Android and Kindle compatible. I’m actively looking for other early design partners and advisors to help me with the design and storytelling elements, so if this is something you’re thinking about too, I’d love to hear from you.

If you’re a parent of a 5-10-year-old kid, you can now try out Scribblins, a new audio-first, co-play experience that uses AI to turn your child’s real artwork into characters, stories, and stickers.

It is available in beta on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Amazon App Store for Fire tablets.

Here’s how it works:

1. Snap a photo of your child’s drawing or art project.
   

2. Talk with Trace the Scribblin (a playful “learning robot”) to tell stories and play games through two creative builds to remix the art with AI-enhanced imagery.
   

3. Download or order printed stickers of your final creations, mailed right to you.

Starting from a child’s real artwork, kids talk with Trace to name characters, build stories in real time, and stretch their imagination through play.

What surprised me most is that the audio storytelling (originally a way to pass time while images generated) now feels more important than the sticker itself. It’s kind of like playing improv with an AI that’s always ready to say, “Yes, and…”

My favorite part is watching kids realize that something they made offline can be extended with technology and turned into something new. To me, this is the first step toward seeing yourself as a creator (vs. just a consumer) of technology.

Scribblins is very much a v1 and still in beta. I’m sharing it now because I believe in building in public and because I’d genuinely love feedback from fellow parents (and your kids).

If you give it a try, let me know what you think at scribblins@buildfirst.ai.

The rest of this post is a storytelling narrative about why I built Scribblins. Feel free to skip ahead (or just ask your AI to summarize it for you).

After starting my own AI builder journey, I realized the thing I care about most isn’t whether my kids know how to use technology, but whether they know how to create with it. Less passive entertainment, more LEGO bricks.

For that to happen, kids need to learn early that technology can build on top of things they already make in the real world: drawings, stories, inventions, ideas. It also felt important to me (and other parents I spoke with) that AI experiences weren’t isolated and unsupervised, but collaborative, contained, and productive.

Scribblins is my first attempt at showing that feedback loop in action.

Today, most AI image generators start with text prompts that invent images from scratch. Scribblins starts with the kid. Any crayon drawing or whiteboard scribble becomes a named character with a story (and, if you want, a sticker sheet as a keepsake).

In other words: The imagination stays with the child; the technology just stretches it.

We don’t yet have clear, universal guardrails for kids and AI, but I’m not waiting for big tech to figure it out. Like it or not, my kids are already growing up with Alexa in every room of the house. (Yours probably are, too.)

That’s why, in our family, we treat AI the same way we teach street smarts. As native New Yorkers, our kids know they aren’t allowed to cross the street alone yet. But we take them outside every day, and they’ve crossed the street thousands of times (while holding a grown-up’s hand).

In essence, they are learning the rules by practicing (with supervision) in the real world. While we can’t control every street corner, we can choose which neighborhoods to bring them into and help them recognize tricky situations along the way.

I think about using AI with my kids the same way. Scribblins isn’t a private babysitter or a secret AI companion. It’s a speakerphone-on, collaborative story game.

Today, it’s built as a relatively contained experience that lasts about as long as an episode of Bluey. By design, you can’t stray too far from the script, and Trace the narrator redirects conversations or image suggestions that incorporate inappropriate themes.

Over time, I want it to feel more episodic and story-driven, but the core idea stays the same: Kids learn how AI fits into their lives in a bounded, collaborative environment. (One where grown-ups are present, too.)

Over the summer, I worked with Harlem Link Charter School on a 4-week pilot program to introduce the building blocks of AI literacy to a summer school class of 8-year-olds.

One activity involved taking art from kids and turning it into real-time characters. (This ended up being their favorite part.) Six weeks later, we had a prototype of Scribblins live in the App Store. To me, this felt like a really cool way to build alongside the target end users, and I intend to do more of it this year.

Since this app was born in a classroom, I’m continuing to iterate on it with real feedback from current students, teachers, and parents. I’ve already brought Scribblins to my daughter’s kindergarten class, and we’ve got another pilot in the works that features first grader builders and middle school QA testers (with teacher supervision).

If AI moves as fast this year as it did last year, there’s no telling what the world will look like by December. Scribblins is my way of staying actively a part of this conversation, throughout all of the twists and turns of the technology and the new-age learning environments it enables.

If you’re interested in learning alongside me, you can download Scribblins and play with it alongside your kids. Share any feedback or ideas with me at scribblins@buildfirst.ai.

Scribblins is the second project that’s part of the Build First studio. Special thanks to Matt Hamilton, the founder of Toy Boat, for working with me last summer as an early design partner on this experiment. And thanks to JY Lee, who helped with our first round of app updates to get it Android and Kindle compatible. I’m actively looking for other early design partners and advisors to help me with the design and storytelling elements, so if this is something you’re thinking about too, I’d love to hear from you.