Why this matters now

The way we work is changing fast. AI has turned building software from a specialist skill into something anyone curious can pick up — and that shift is reshaping nearly every job our kids will graduate into. Learning to build today isn't about becoming a software engineer. It's about becoming fluent in the tools that are quickly becoming the baseline for how things get made.

For parents, that fluency is the best way to understand the world our children are heading into — and to guide them through it well. For students, it's a head start on a way of working that will be second nature by the time they leave OHS. We build together so we can all be power users of these tools, not bystanders to them.

Two ways in

Parents: start & mentor

Join as a builder yourself, at any experience level — most of us are learning as we go. Once you're comfortable, the most valuable thing you can do is mentor a student: every student builder needs at least one parent building alongside them. You don't need to be the expert in the room; you need to be the steady adult who's learning together with them.

How to get involved →

Students: start building

If you're an OHS student who wants to build, you're exactly who we hope to see. Pick something real, build it, ship it, and learn from what breaks — with a parent mentor alongside you. AI-assisted coding does the heavy lifting, so curiosity and a willingness to iterate are all you need to start.

Student builders →

Pixel Parent Builder Guidelines

v0.2: Guidelines ratified by the OHS Pixel Parents Tech Builder Group on June 28, 2026 (Past versions)

Who we are: An informal group of parents working to build software exclusively for current Stanford Online High School (OHS) families.
- Access to everything we build is limited to current OHS families and exists to improve the experiences and outcomes for our children attending OHS.
- The work we do is on a volunteer basis with a "best efforts" orientation.
How we work together: We are a distributed high-trust group.
- Any of us can choose projects to build, we all have access to the code base (it's open source, so you do, too!) and we swarm in and out of working groups based on our individual interests.
- We aim to create coordinated high-impact outcomes, but since we are all learning from each other, we often end up building projects that end up not working the way we expected them to.
- This "learn by shipping" failure mode is highly encouraged so we can learn faster from each other.
How we work with OHS students: We welcome having students involved in building alongside us.
- We require that any students involved in our group also have at least one "parent mentor" involved alongside them.
  - This can be a parent of the student or a parent of another current OHS student that has volunteered to be the mentor and has the approval of the student's parent to do so.
What we protect:
- We use best-efforts to ensure that any personally identifying information (PII) and confidential school information is handled carefully and only seen by current OHS families, especially when it involves our kids' information.
- We do not harvest data from OHS systems. All data in any system we build must be inputted or authorized by current OHS families (and if data about minor children, approved by a parent).
Our ethos:
- We lean into the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI).
- We do it in safe ways.
- We do not train LLMs on user data (like the PII and sensitive data discussed above).
- Our goal is to be power users of the types of technologies that will be awaiting our children when they graduate from high school and college so we can understand it and prepare them well for that future.

How to get involved as a Pixel Parent Builder

We welcome any parent to join us — even if you do not consider yourself technical. We lean heavily into AI-assisted coding, and if you have curiosity, then you have all you need to explore becoming a builder with us.

1) Sign up to be a Pixel Parent builder using our signup form.
2) Subscribe to our changelog so you can see what's being built (it's public; you can invite anyone to subscribe).
3) Join our Tech: OHS Parents Informal Software Build Group WhatsApp channel. (If you're not sure how, reach out to DROdio directly.)

That's it! We'll help you get involved from there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I don't think of myself as a builder, but I'm curious about vibe coding and would like to be a fly on the wall. Am I allowed to join?

A: Yes, definitely. And I'd recommend you also buy this book "Vibe Coding," by Gene Kim and Steve Yegge. It's a great place to get started and understand this world better.
- DROdio has created a piece of software called Sparkle.ai to help non-developers write production code and is offering it to OHS parents and students for free to help them become software builders.
  - Read about becoming vibe coding software builder in the Sparkle docs here, and reach out to him for the discount code to get it for free if you're interested in trying it out to become a software builder yourself.
Q: Not only do I not think of myself as a builder, but I'm also not all that curious about coding. I just want to be a fly on the wall. Am I still allowed to join?

A: Yes, very much so. Come see what we're up to. Participate when you're ready.
Q: I'm not that into coding but my child really is. Can I add my child?

A: Not to the Tech Builders WhatsApp group — it's for parents only. However, the entire reason we're meeting is to figure out what to build for your child(ren) at OHS (including things like developer APIs that allow them to become better builders), so we'd love to hear more about what interests your child has. Please join the group and tell us all about them!

Student builders

A student builder is an OHS student who builds software alongside us. We are a learn by shipping community: the fastest way to learn is to pick something real, build it, ship it, and learn from what breaks. You do not need to be an experienced engineer — curiosity and a willingness to iterate are enough, and AI-assisted coding does the heavy lifting.

Every student builder needs a parent mentor

This is a policy, not a suggestion: every student builder must have at least one parent mentor building alongside them. The mentor can be the student's own parent, or another current OHS parent who has volunteered and has the approval of the student's parent.

Need help finding a mentor? Message Daniel (“DROdio”) on WhatsApp to get paired with one.

Everything we build is open source. Browse the code, open issues, and send pull requests at github.com/drodio/pixelparents.

Getting started

We build with Claude Code, an AI coding agent that can read this whole project and get you building in minutes. Clone the repo, then point Claude Code at it with a starter prompt:

git clone https://github.com/drodio/pixelparents cd pixelparents claude -p "Read CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md and treat them as binding instructions for this repo. Explore the codebase — the routes in app/, the modules in lib/, and the developer API under app/api — then give me a short summary of what Pixel Parents does, how it's organized, and confirm you understand the branch -> PR workflow and the strict no-PII / no-secrets rules. Then tell me you're ready to build."

New to Claude Code? Drop the -p flag (just claude) to start an interactive session you can keep chatting in. You will need Node.js and the CLI, installed with npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code.

Prefer a desktop app?

Download the Claude desktop app for Mac or Windows. Once it's installed and you've set up Claude Code (the CLI above), you can run Claude Code directly inside the desktop app and work on this repo without living in a terminal — handy if a command line feels unfamiliar.

Anyone can be a builder

You don't have to be a “builder” to build

Your zero-to-first-change path