Smarty Pants Academy
by Sahil, Sulaxmi
A pixel-art AI school where kids explore classrooms and learn from live AI teachers who remember every student, every lesson.
The idea
Knowledge Academy is an AI pixel-art school where kids aged 6–12 (Grade 1 - Grade 6) explore classrooms like a video game and learn from live AI teachers — Ms. Rose, Mr. Zara, and Dr. Nova — powered by Tavus real-time video. Instead of opening a worksheet or chatbot, a student walks their character into a room, and a teacher greets them by name, remembers what they covered last time, checks on their homework, and picks up exactly where they left off — with every session, mood, and curriculum milestone stored in Supabase. The idea tackles a familiar gap: kids who can focus for hours in games disengage in minutes with traditional school, not because they hate learning, but because it feels boring and impersonal. Knowledge Academy merges the engagement of a game world with the intimacy of a teacher who never forgets you — turning personalized education from a chat interface into a place kids actually want to return to.
What it does
Students walk a pixel-art school, enter a classroom, and get a live video lesson from Ms. Rose, Mr. Zara, or Dr. Nova. Each PAL loads the student’s history from Supabase before speaking — homework, last session, current unit — then holds a real back-and-forth lesson (see/hear the student, teach one topic, assign homework, wrap up). Sessions persist so the teacher remembers them next time. Curriculum progress, profiles, and hallway multiplayer included.
How it works
Lovable built the React app: login, pixel-art school world, classroom view, and profile page. Students move with arrow keys; door collisions trigger a classroom session. PAL Maker (Tavus) created three teachers — Ms. Rose, Mr. Zara, Dr. Nova — each with a stock replica face, custom system prompt, and full pipeline: Raven-1 (sees/hears the student), Sparrow-1 (conversation flow), Claude Sonnet 4.6 (teaching brain), and lip-synced video over Daily.co via @tavus/cvi-ui. Supabase stores everything: student profiles, curriculum progress, session history, and homework. When a student enters a classroom, the create-conversation Edge Function loads their memory, builds a conversational_context string, and starts a Tavus CVI session with a per-student memory_stores key. The frontend embeds the live video PAL; the right panel shows curriculum progress (Magic Canvas-style visual layer alongside the conversation). On exit, end-session closes the Tavus call and saves the lesson to Postgres. Dual memory: Supabase holds structured data (units, homework, summaries); Tavus memory_stores holds conversational continuity — so the teacher remembers the student every time they return.
What's next
1. Parent & teacher dashboard — Give parents a read-only view of session summaries, homework completion, and curriculum progress across all three subjects, with alerts when a child is stuck on a topic or falling behind. Teachers (or tutors) could override the PAL’s conversational_context — e.g. “focus on fractions this week” — without rebuilding the persona. 2. Collaborative classroom moments — Extend Supabase Realtime beyond hallway presence into shared lessons: two students enter the same classroom and learn together with one PAL that adapts to both (group homework, peer prompts, turn-taking). Makes the school feel social, not solo.
■ Event Recap · June 27, 2026 · Tavus HQ
PALmaker × LovableHACKATHON
Built with PAL Maker + Lovable, together with the ProductTank SF community — Tavus HQ, San Francisco, June 27, 2026.
Chapter 01 / 04
Doors open.
Welcome, builders — badges on, credits claimed, countdown running.
The winners
On the podium
■Judges' favorites
Ten more that stood out
The full lineup
A–Z
■ The judging panel
Eleven judges. Every build scored.
★ THE JUDGING PANEL
- 01Saswat MishraProduct @ Hyperbound
- 02Gagan BhatApplied AI @ Anthropic
- 03Gaurav MahajanEngineering @ Apple
- 04Ankit SultanaEngineering @ Notion
- 05Karsh PandeyProduct @ Virta Health
- 06Zane HomsiProduct @ Glean
- 07Kelly PengFounder @ First Intuition
- 08Rohan BenkarEngineering @ Coursera
- 09Darius KarelEngineering @ OpenAI
- 10William GaoMentor @ StartX · stealth founder
- 11Karthik Ragunath Ananda KumarAI Research @ Tavus
■With thanks
Our hosts
■June 27, 2026