Playbook
School ERP
AI agents
Field notes
What a daycare really wants from a parent app (and what it doesn't)
We sat with the owners of seven daycares while they used three competing parent apps, ours included, across an eight-week trial. The takeaways were uncomfortable for the industry, including for us.
Parents do not want more. They want less, on time, and from someone they recognise.
Three things parents actually read
Daily summary at pickup time (“Zara had lunch, napped 1-3, two diaper changes”). Photo of their child sometime during the day. An honest message if anything was off, fever, fall, sad mood.
Everything else is noise
Lesson plans, curriculum updates, weekly newsletters, monthly themes, parents skim and forget. They sound impressive in the sales pitch and add load for the staff with no measurable benefit.
What the agent does
Auto-drafts the daily summary from a few staff taps on the room iPad. Reminds the teacher to take one photo per child per day. Routes incidents (fever, fall, allergy) to a separate, highlighted thread the owner sees first.
What we deliberately removed
Calendar sync. In-app payments. Group chat. Each one added support load and got used by under 8% of parents. The best feature we shipped last quarter was a smaller, faster home screen.
Related reading
More from the ai agents stack.
AI agents
Playbook