The core loop
A parent adds a kid and assigns chores. The kid marks a chore done, the parent approves it, and points land in an append-only ledger. Points become rewards, allowance, or family missions everyone unlocks together — and it all syncs privately across the family's devices through iCloud.
Assign chore → kid taps done → parent approves → points earned → spend on rewards.
For parents
Four tabs — Today, Chores, Rewards, Family — plus deep tools on every kid.
- Today — approvals waiting on you, today's chores, the family mission, and a live leaderboard, with big one-tap approve / send-back buttons
- Chores & rotations — one-time, recurring, or rotating chores, with templates for points, icons, approval, and photo-proof
- Chore Library — roughly 285 ready-made, age-tagged chores across 23 themed packs, plus build and save your own packs right alongside them
- Teamwork — split a chore across a few kids; everyone can see who's finished and who's still working, and finishing the team earns everyone points plus a bonus
- Rewards & requests — build the reward store, approve spend requests, and capture reward ideas
- Allowance — real cash allowance tracked per kid, separate from points, with its own ledger
- Reports — a ClockRings-style viewer stepping through Day / Week / Month / Year, with completion and participation rings, charts, and per-kid breakdowns — shareable as a quick summary or a themed image card
- Family hub — missions, calendar, messages, a kindness board, leaderboard, announcements, polls, a shared album, and more
- Notifications — get pinged the moment a chore's handed in, a reward's requested, or a message comes in, with its own on/off switch for each kind
- Lock — Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode locks the parent side, so a shared iPad stays kid-safe the second you put it down
- Backup & Restore — export everything to a file and restore it with a gap-fill merge
For kids
A big, friendly, PIN-protected Kid Mode. Chores sit right at the top; everything else is a tidy tile menu instead of an endless list — and every page wears the kid's own theme, background and all.
- Kid home — points, streak & allowance up top, then their chores: to-do, waiting, and done today
- Team chores — tick off their own part of a shared chore and watch the whole team's progress
- Reward store — browse and spend points; requests go to a parent for approval
- My Activity & My Journal — a plain-language points ledger, plus a private diary with moods and photos
- Goals & savings — savings goals, a wishlist, and a levels/XP track
- Fun & extras — a prize spin, study timer, reading log, routines, and daily check-ins
- Together — messages, cheers, gifting points to siblings, and gratitude notes
- Recognition — badges & achievements, a weekly recap, and full history
Behavior & character growth
More than chores — Merit tracks behavior and character growth, turning good days into points and rewards.
- Simple 0–3 behavior ratings that earn points scaled to how well a kid did
- Weekly and 30-day trend charts per kid, with a per-category breakdown
- A Behavior Library of roughly 110 behaviors to browse and add by category, plus your own groups of favorites
- A digitized "Behavior Progress Monitoring" chart — a weekly grid working toward a multi-week reward goal
- Quick logged notes, plus a kindness & kudos board for catching kids being good
Built for every kind of kid
Merit meets families where they are — every grade, every schooling choice, and neurodivergent kids too.
- Grade and school-type settings (public, private, charter, online, or homeschool) with a homeschool-first layout
- A per-kid support profile for autism, ADHD, sensory needs, anxiety, and speech — calming strategies, triggers, and reduced-motion modes, strengths-based throughout
- A classic First–Then board for exactly what's next
- A Calm Down screen with a breathing circle and each kid's own calming strategies
35 fun kid themes + calm parent themes
Each kid's theme paints their whole section — accent color, background, and a tiled motif, from mermaids and dinosaurs to race cars and unicorns. Ten shared themes, ten for boys, ten for girls, and five calmer options for parents — readable in light and dark, synced across every device.
Want something nobody else has? Design a theme of your own — an accent color, two gradient colors, an emoji, and a motif — and it syncs everywhere, Apple TV included.
Planned pricing
Merit is free to run your family: unlimited guardians and kids, and the whole core loop — chores, points, rewards, allowance, missions, messages, and calendar — with no caps on family size.
A Merit+ tier is planned for the Chore Library, Behavior Monitoring & Charts, Reports, extra themes, and Backup & Restore, shared across the whole family with one purchase. Pricing isn't final yet, so no numbers here just yet.
Everywhere you need it
- iPhone & iPad — the full experience, parent tabs and Kid Mode
- Mac — the same app, native on macOS, with a real sidebar and keyboard shortcuts
- Apple TV — a full family dashboard on the big screen: every kid's own page, the reward store, live progress rings for today's chores, and the whole Family hub, all wearing your family's theme
- Apple Watch — a glanceable companion
- Home & Lock Screen widgets — a Leaderboard widget and a Lock Screen approval-queue widget, so nothing waits on you unnoticed
- Private iCloud sync — no account or login; everything stays in your own family's iCloud
Status
Merit is actively in development and not yet available. Check back here or watch the blog for updates as it gets closer to release.