STEM
SextantForge
How did sailors find their way with no GPS? They read the sky. The North Star’s height above the horizon IS your latitude; a clock set to home turns your local noon into your longitude at 15° an hour. Measure Polaris, predict your position, then check it in the Navigator’s lab. Real, tiny, deterministic maths — angles and time — no internet. Ages 9–14.
#1f6f9e Distributed-narrative cast
Meet the cast
SextantForge's crew ARE the sky's four navigation instruments — the cast IS the curriculum: each character's job IS one way the heavens fix your place. Polaris holds still over the North Pole, so its height above the horizon reads out your latitude, degree for degree. Chrono, the ship's clock, keeps home time and turns 'when is MY noon?' into 'how far west have I come?' at 15° an hour. Wayfinder steers by the stars that always rise in the same place — the Pacific navigator's star compass. Mentor Meridian draws the invisible north-south lines and reminds the crew that one hour of time is exactly 15° of longitude. Painted portraits + storybooks are a tracked follow-on (R-WEB-CLONE-SPAWN-TRACKED); a text-only crew + flat, deterministic on-device maths ship now — nothing leaves the device.
Polaris
Holds still above the North Pole so the angle it makes above your horizon IS your latitude — sail north and it climbs, sail south and it sinks
Chrono
The ship's clock that keeps home time, turning the gap between home noon and your local noon into your longitude at 15° per hour
Meridian
(Mentor) Draws the north-south lines of longitude and keeps the crew's one rule straight: Earth turns 360° in 24 hours, so one hour = 15°
Wayfinder
Steers by the stars that rise at the same bearing every night for a given latitude — the Pacific star compass, no instruments at all
What's inside
Learning goal
How did sailors find their way with no GPS? They read the sky. The North Star’s height above the horizon IS your latitude; a clock set to home turns your local noon into your longitude at 15° an hour. Measure Polaris, predict your position, then check it in the Navigator’s lab. Real, tiny, deterministic maths — angles and time — no internet. Ages 9–14.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned kits × 25 questions = 400 questions per app, mapped to recognized standards.
On-device AI mentor
FoundationModels-powered hints, feedback, and adaptive difficulty — all running locally.
Mentored by Meridian — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How SextantForge handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ No ads, no in-app purchases — you pay once
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ Parental controls + session limits + content filters built in
SextantForge runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
SextantForge is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch