Two Loons
The Human Mode mark: a sun setting over layered water, in a circle

Human Mode · Real life. Together.

A family planner that won't close.

It started with a school planner that lived inside a laptop and stopped existing every time the laptop shut. A paper planner from the nineties worked because it was an object, in your own hand, at a fixed moment. Digital school got rid of all three. Human Mode puts them back — for one kid first, and then, because a house is not one person, for the whole house.

  • One week, for everybody in the house, on one screen.
  • One thing at a time, for whoever needs it that way.
  • LOON$ for starting, for asking for help, for finishing. Never a fine.
  • No logins for the kids. One family code, and it asks who you are once.

Open Human Mode In beta. Works as a home-screen app on a phone.

Human Mode's first screen: the mark, the line Let's find out who you are, and three doors — Set this up for my family, Somebody gave me a code, and I have an account here.
The front door. It asks once, and then it stops asking.

Everyone's week. Everyone's way.

The names run across the top of every screen. Tap one and you see the app exactly as that person sees it — their tasks, their week, their LOON$. Each person picks how theirs opens, because a fourteen-year-old who needs one thing at a time and a sister who needs to see that the week is bounded are not the same person with different settings.

The Tasks screen: three names across the top, Get to work, two things — Dentist, 30 min, Sign the field trip slip, 15 min — each with a Start button, then Add a task and One at a time.
Tasks. A number, not a list of fourteen things, and a Start button on each one — because starting is the hard part, and the app knows it.
The one-at-a-time screen: a single card, Sign the field trip slip, 15 min, a large START button, and the line 1 more after this · 30 min left today.
One at a time. One card, one button, and one line that says how much of the day is left. Nothing else, ever.
The Week screen: Today, Sep 7, with two things at 7:00pm and their tick boxes, then Tuesday and Wednesday with Nothing planned yet and Add here buttons, on lined paper.
The week. Everything anybody said they'd do, against a week that already has practice, dinner and the dentist on it.
Where are you at, Dad? A grid of forty-eight small drawn faces — Human, Happy, Social, Calm, Focus, Quiet, Bored, Couch, Hangry, Grumpy, Tired, Stressed and on — with Human right now at the top and a Clear button.
Where are you at. Forty-eight faces, a tap each, and it's only yours to say. The face sits beside your name for the house to see. Nothing else changes.

You copy it across yourself

School portals, calendars and the sky feed the Board. Nothing on the Board is on your list until you move it there, one tap, answering two questions: how long? and when? That minute of copying is the whole point, not overhead — it's the planner in your own hand, and it's why an assignment can't hide in a closed laptop.

The safety net is printed on your screen

When somebody falls behind, the app nudges them first and tells them exactly what trips a note to a parent, before it happens. The ladder is on the kid's screen, in full. A kid who finds out they were watched silently never opens the app again — so nobody is.

Chores, birthdays, the tide

Weekly chores land on the right day and pay when they're done. Birthdays and the days that are everyone's come round on their own, with the reminders that lead up to them. And the sky report says what the weather, the water and the air are doing over the house, because that's part of the week too.

It looks like yours

Ten looks in the box — a ruled notepad, Human Mode's own sun-over-water, sun-bleached paper, a trailhead, a manga page, a midnight one for the dark. Every colour is a knob, and the app warns you before you make it unreadable. Yours follows you to every phone in the house.

The economy

LOON$. Arcade tickets, honestly run.

Two separate things, on purpose. Rank is earned, never spent and never lost — pure standing. LOON$ are earned and spent, at an exchange rate the house sets and everyone can see.

  • Pressing Start pays on its own, separately from finishing. Beginning a thing you don't feel like beginning is the hardest part, so it's rewarded as one.
  • Saying I'm stuck is the best-paying single button in the app. You can't learn to ask for help by being told to; you can learn it from it being the smart move.
  • Chores pay a little. Paid work — posted on the board, taken by choice, signed off by a grown-up — pays a lot, and shows up in the week's total for the whole house.
  • Nothing is ever deducted. No fines, no penalties, no clawbacks. It's a rule in the database, not a policy: the money is not allowed to go down.

The exchange rate sits under the balance on everyone's screen, not just the parent's. A price rise is announced before it lands, so you can see it coming; a price cut is immediate. LOON$ already earned are never silently worth less.

The LOON$ screen: 0 LOON$, Caveman · 40 XP to Noticer, a progress bar, filters for All, Home, School, Paid Work and Projects, then The Week with a dollar total and a line per person, and a Paid work section with Mow the lawn, $40, Post it.
LOON$. The rank at the top, the week's total for the house, and the paid work board underneath.
Ten silhouettes in a left-to-right progression, in the app's sunset-over-water colours: an ape, a hunched hominid, a caveman with a club, a hunter with a spear, a person slumped at a desk over a laptop, a person hunched over a phone, then three figures walking increasingly upright, and finally a figure standing straight on a mountain outcrop under a full moon.
Same ten steps as the ladder below - the tools change, and for a while they bend you further into them. The last figure isn't looking at a screen.

The ladder

Ten ranks, from Caveman to Full Human.

Rank is what you did, in order. Each one comes with the sentence the app says when you get there, and the order is the argument: you learn to start before you learn to finish, and you learn to ask before either.

  1. Caveman Everyone starts here. You will not be here long.
  2. Noticer You know what you have got. Nothing is a surprise any more.
  3. Scribe You write it down yourself. Nothing lives only in a closed laptop.
  4. Starter You can begin a thing you do not feel like beginning. This is the hard one.
  5. Asker You say “I am stuck” out loud, early, without it costing you anything.
  6. Finisher What you start, you end. Even the boring parts.
  7. Planner You know what next week wants before it arrives.
  8. Keeper When you say you will do a thing at a time, you do it at that time.
  9. Teammate Other people can count on you. That is a real thing you now are.
  10. Full Human You run your own life. Nobody is chasing you.

Getting in

Nobody has to log in.

The first person sets the house up and adds everyone else. After that it's a six-character family code: put it on the next phone, tap your name, done. Grown-up things sit behind the grown-up's own PIN. An email and password is there for a parent walking in from a new phone, and for nothing else.

The Settings screen: Calendars and connections, then Who's looking with three names — Ellis, One thing at a time; Wren, The whole week; Dad, this phone — each with an Edit button, then What we call each other and Add someone.
Settings. Who's looking, how each of them wants the app to open, and the code that puts the house on another phone.

Today

Where it lives

Human Mode is at humanmode.twoloons.io. Add it to your home screen and it opens full-screen, like an app, because it is one.

Next

A Two Loons account

The email-and-password door is the start of one sign-in for everything Two Loons makes. Family codes stay — they say which house, not which person. The parent PIN goes the day the account can answer that question itself. The whole plan is on the studio page.

The names on these screens are made up. The screens aren't — that's the app, running, with a made-up house in it, and the zero on the LOON$ screen is where everyone starts.