Coach Mode 🖥️

Help while you play — but only when YOU ask. Coach Mode is on-demand: a normal website can never watch your other apps, and we would never want it to. You tap for help, your coach looks at what you share, then it's off again.

🧩 The desktop extension (prototype — in this build!)

A real, loadable browser extension prototype ships with this preview in the coach-extension/ folder. What it does, honestly:

On-demand only: it declares activeTab + sidePanel permissions and no continuous capture, no background screen watching, no host permissions for all sites. It can only act on the tab where you click it.
Clicking it opens the Academy (Ask Tommy + Photo Hint) in the browser's side panel, next to your game guide or emulator tab.
Every session start/stop is written to the parent-visible capture log on this device.

Files: manifest.json · popup.html · README (install steps). Parent install: open your browser's Extensions page → Developer mode → "Load unpacked" → pick the coach-extension folder. In the live version the extension will be store-listed and parent-installed.

📱 On a tablet? Screenshot-share flow

Tablets can't run the extension, so Coach Mode there = the Photo Hint flow: screenshot your game, share it to the Academy, get a hint or the full answer. In this version the photo never leaves the device and Tommy answers from your description; every photo hint is logged for parents (see the Parent Dashboard capture log).

Open Photo Hint

🎮 PC Play-Along — Tommy watches & plays along (PC only)

On a computer? Pick a goal, tap Start, and your browser will ask WHICH window to share — choose your game. Tommy samples a picture of that window about every 5 seconds and posts short nudges tied to your goal (preview: nudges come from the verified library — vision-smart notes arrive at launch). No video is recorded or saved — each picture is looked at, shown to you, and thrown away.

Session goal Which lesson, level or boss? (optional) Anything Tommy should know? (optional — helps him match the verified library)

Sessions are capped at 30 minutes (then break time — real coaches enforce breaks), with water/stretch nudges along the way. Every session is written to the parent log: start, stop, how long, how many frames Tommy checked, how many nudges — and that no video was recorded. Parents can view or delete the log.

💻 PC vs 📱 everything else — the honest version

PC (Windows/Mac/Chromebook browser): Play-Along works — your browser can share one window, with your permission, every time.
Phones & tablets: their systems don't let a website watch the screen. Use Photo Hint snapshots instead.
Consoles (Switch/Xbox/PlayStation): same story — no screen sharing to websites. Photo Hint is the way.
Fortnite note: Tommy watches the shared video only. Fortnite gives no live game-data feed to anyone — what he knows, he knows from watching and from the verified library.
Minecraft PC — future upgrade: someday, a parent-installed add-on or an Academy server could send Tommy REAL game data (where you are, what's in your inventory, what you built). That's a future upgrade path, clearly labeled — it does not exist yet, and we won't pretend it does.

🪟 Tommy in the corner (Picture-in-Picture) — experimental

On an iPad, Tommy can float in a corner while you switch apps: an animated mini-Tommy in a little video window. It's experimental — iPad Safari's support for web picture-in-picture varies, so try it and see. If it doesn't float on your iPad, nothing is broken: Tommy's bubble at the bottom of every page always works.

🛡️ The Coach Mode promises

Visible: a big indicator shows whenever Coach Mode is on. No invisible watching, ever.
Logged: parents see every session (start/stop + questions) in the capture log — and can delete the log.
Yours to stop: one tap ends it. The coach never restarts itself.