Philip Parmar runs Prometheus Minds, an ADHD and executive-function tutoring practice, and had already written the method down: a 174-page parent handbook covering twelve executive-function skills, from task initiation to emotional regulation. He wanted that method in parents’ hands at 7pm on a school night, when homework has turned into a meltdown and nobody is thinking about chapter four.

The apps already in the space split two ways. Some are AI tools for the adult who has ADHD. Others are content libraries and trackers for parents with very little real coaching in them. Philip’s brief was explicit: a coach first, not another place to log data. It had to know the specific child, answer in the moment, and sound like his method rather than a generic chatbot.

That brought hard constraints with it. It is a product for stressed parents, so nothing could shame them, and the moment they reach for help could never sit behind a paywall. It touches children’s behavior and family health, so it had to route crisis language to people, not to a model. And it had to ship under Philip’s own company and developer account, so he owns it outright.

Prototype first, then native

We started with a competitor teardown and a self-contained, clickable prototype Philip could open in a browser behind a password on our site. A design-studio drawer let him switch palettes, typefaces and photography live, so the brand was something he chose by clicking rather than describing. Once he signed off on direction, we built the real app natively in SwiftUI.

The coach is the home screen

The app opens on Ember, a living flame avatar, with one large button: I’m in a hard moment. One tap or one spoken sentence starts a short guided flow: steady yourself first, then the exact words to say, then make the next step smaller. Below it sit a 20-second daily check-in, a quick moment log and a free-text or voice composer that opens a full conversation with Ember.

A Claude-powered coach that stays on method

Replies stream from Claude through a small Node service we host, so no API key ships inside the app. The system prompt carries the Prometheus Method, the twelve skills and the family’s own context. Crisis language is caught on the device and again on the server before it reaches the model, and the parent is routed to the 988 lifeline and Crisis Text Line instead. After each conversation a cheaper model distills it into per-child memory, so the next reply can say this is the fifth homework standoff this week and point back to what worked.

Generous free tier, no wall in a crisis

Prometheus Plus is $9.99 a month or $99 a year, each with a 7-day free trial, verified server-side against Apple’s signed transactions. Free accounts get 30 live coaching replies a month. Past that, the coach falls back to on-device guidance written in the handbook’s voice instead of stopping. The hard-moment flow is never gated.

Built for the whole household

Accounts, multiple children, photos and coaching history sync through Supabase across 16 tables, every one of them behind row-level security. A parent can invite a co-parent or caregiver with a six-character code, share a read-only progress link with a tutor that opens in any browser, and export a one-page summary for a teacher or clinician.

Shipped under the client’s name

We migrated the project to Philip’s Apple developer team, with his bundle IDs and App Group, set up Xcode Cloud to archive and ship builds, and took the app through App Review: account deletion in the app, privacy manifests, subscription terms, and a reviewer walkthrough recording. App Store screenshots, a captioned app preview video, a launch email, print fliers and social posts went to Philip as one marketing kit.

Prometheus Ember 1.0 went live on the App Store on October 5, 2026, published by Prometheus Academics LLC, with a 1.0.1 update following on October 21.

• An AI coach that remembers each child, streams replies, and routes crisis language to the 988 lifeline before any model sees it.
• A hard-moment flow, voice or text, that is free for every parent, every time.
• A library covering all 12 executive-function skills from Philip’s handbook, each with its own chapter, plus a Say this now bank of scripts a parent can star into a personal toolkit.
• Track with a weekly story view and a month calendar, Grow with AI-suggested weekly plans, routines and a transition timer.
• Co-parent and caregiver sharing, a read-only tutor link, and a one-page report a parent can hand to a teacher or clinician.
• Three home-screen widgets, Siri shortcuts and daily check-in reminders.
• Prometheus Plus, monthly and yearly, with free trials and server-verified entitlements.

It is the third thing we have built for Philip, after the Prometheus Minds and Prometheus EQ sites, and the one that carries his method furthest from the tutoring room.