The one rule
Plenty of software has added AI because it could. This one added it in exactly one place: the paperwork.
The Crow proposes.
The parent disposes.
It drafts. You read it, change it, and decide whether it goes anywhere. Nothing it writes reaches a document until you say so.
That is not a slogan bolted on afterward. It is how the features are built. Every place the Crow writes something, the writing lands in a box you can edit, next to a checkbox that starts unticked. Approve nothing and your records still generate — they simply contain what you logged and nothing more.
The reason is simple. A homeschool record is a document about a child, and in some states it is a legal one. Nobody should be handing an evaluator a paragraph they haven't read.
What it actually does
Four jobs, and they are all the same job: turning what you already logged into something you'd otherwise write by hand.
It describes the work sample
Photograph a worksheet, a project, a page of writing. The Crow reads what's in the picture and drafts two formal sentences describing what it demonstrates — the kind of sentence a portfolio wants and nobody enjoys composing in April. It also guesses the subject. You correct both before anything is kept.
It drafts a summary of each subject
From the lessons actually completed, the notes you wrote, and the work you photographed, it drafts a short paragraph per subject. It names the curriculum. It describes what was done. It says nothing the record doesn't support. You read every one, edit freely, and tick the ones you want.
It suggests what might fit
Ask in plain words and it recommends from a vetted list, weighed against your teaching philosophy, the child's learning style, and what you've told it about how your family works. Suggestions only. Nothing is added to your Library unless you add it.
It writes down what you said
Speak a note and it becomes text — filler words trimmed, punctuation added, your words otherwise untouched. It does not summarize you, rephrase you, or decide what you meant.
The Crow does not build your plan, choose your curriculum, pace your books, or decide what your children study. That is all ordinary arithmetic and your own decisions. If every AI feature vanished tomorrow, the planner would work exactly as it does today.
What happens on its own
One thing, and you should know about it.
Every feature in the previous section waits for you to press something. There is a single exception, and hiding it would be the wrong way to earn your trust.
Filing your notes
When you save a note without saying which child or subject it belongs to, the Crow reads it and tries to file it — matching names it recognizes and guessing the subject. It only writes an answer when it's confident; otherwise it leaves the note unfiled for you to sort.
This exists because the alternative is a tray of unsorted notes at the end of the year. It changes filing, never wording: your note text is never altered. And anything it gets wrong you can change in the Chronicle in two taps.
That's the whole list. Nothing else in Crow & Stone contacts an AI service unless you press a button.
What leaves your account
Some of these features need to send something somewhere. Here is exactly what, and when.
Crow & Stone does not run its own AI models. When a feature needs one, the relevant piece of information is sent to a third-party provider, processed, and returned. Nothing is stored there, and your family's data is not used to train anyone's model.
What gets sent, and only when you use that feature
- A work sample photograph — when you ask for a description of it.
- A voice recording — when you dictate a note.
- Note text, subject names, and your children's first names — when a note is filed, so it can tell who it's about.
- Completed lessons, notes, and work descriptions — when you draft Portfolio summaries.
- A child's grade, learning style, strengths, and challenges as you entered them — when you ask for curriculum suggestions.
What never leaves for AI processing: your photographs generally, your schedule, your payment details, your address, and every part of the Chronicle you haven't used an AI feature on.
If a photograph of your child's work being processed by an outside service isn't something you're comfortable with, don't use that feature — or turn the Crow off entirely. The rest of Crow & Stone works without it. That is a real choice, not a technicality.
What it will never do
Some of these are technical limits. Most are decisions.
Grade, score, or rate your child. It is instructed not to evaluate ability, assign levels, or judge progress, and it is never asked to.
Praise your child. A portfolio paragraph that gushes is worth less to a reviewer than one that reports.
Invent anything. No dates, no scores, no achievements that aren't in what you logged.
Put words in a document you haven't read. Every drafted sentence is shown to you first and starts unapproved.
Change what you wrote. Your notes stay in your words. Where a formal version is needed, it is written alongside yours, never over it.
Move your lessons or rearrange your plan. It has no ability to change your schedule. That was tried and deliberately removed.
Talk to your children. There is no chat surface for a student. Your children don't have logins.
Be trained on your family. Your data is not used to improve anyone's model, and it is never sold.
Turning it off
Some families don't want AI near their children's work. That's a reasonable position and it deserves a real answer rather than a buried checkbox.
One switch, in Settings
Turn the Crow off and every feature on this page stops. The automatic filing stops running. The buttons stop appearing. Nothing is sent anywhere for AI processing, at all, ever.
Everything else keeps working exactly as before: the Compass, the pacing, the Cache, the Chronicle, the Portfolio, the Family Record, the Yearbook. You write your own captions and your own subject summaries, which is what you'd be doing anyway.
You can turn it back on whenever you like, and turning it off never removes anything already in your records. Words the Crow drafted and you approved are yours — they stay.
Crow & Stone is a planner and a record-keeper first. The AI is a convenience layer on top of it, and it's priced the same either way. Nothing is withheld from a family who switches it off.
Limits and fair use
There's a ceiling. You will almost certainly never meet it.
AI features cost real money per use, so membership includes a monthly allowance rather than an unlimited one. It's set high enough that ordinary family use doesn't come near it, and it resets every month.
We don't publish a number, because the right number is something we're still learning alongside the families using the app. If your family's use ever approaches the limit, we'll reach out and talk to you about it before anything stops working. If the limits change in a way that affects you, we'll tell you before it takes effect, not after.
The full version of that commitment lives in the Terms.