The Family layer — our intent

Inherits from ETHOS.md. This is the spine the family surfaces bend toward: the Wall, the child-view hub, screentime, growth nudges, and the optional PorchHearth involvements. When a family surface says what it is, it says a true facet of this.

The one sentence

The family layer exists to help a parent support their child's growth and development. Our own tools carry that claim directly; the neighbor layer we surface alongside it is described honestly as what it is — not dressed in developmental language it can't hold.

Not a dashboard that watches a child. Not a store that sells to a family. A quiet set of instruments a parent can pick up — or leave.

The correction that keeps this honest (PorchHearth pushback, 2026-07-26, invited and right): "optional involvement in a child's growth" is a claim only some surfaces can carry. A getaway is a commercial rental; most services (lawn care, handyman, pet-sitting) have nothing to do with a child. Framing a cabin booking as child-development "launders commerce through developmental language" — the exact move we say we avoid. So: the developmental claim attaches to the layer that can carry it (our growth nudges, chores→credit, routines — and, of the neighbor feeds, events), and the marketplace feeds are described as a neighbor network, plainly.

What "growth and development" means here

The same thing ETHOS means by story-as-technology, aimed at a childhood: the small crossings that make a person. A tiny story written. A curiosity followed into a science experiment. A body moved with other kids. A first real step toward a goal. A neighbor's potluck a family shows up to. These are developmental invitations — and our job is to make the good ones easy to say yes to, without ever turning a childhood into a funnel. (A weekend rental or a lawn-care listing is not one of these — it's a convenience a parent may want, and we name it as that, not as a crossing.)

The rules that keep it honest

1. Optional, always. Every involvement is a parent-set opt-in that defaults OFF. A family that turns nothing on loses nothing — the wall still works.
2. Invitation, never a nag. Growth nudges rotate ≤2/day and are phrased as invitations. No streak-guilt, no manipulation, no dark patterns. (Inherits the Living Voice ethics wall.)
3. Size the claim to the surface. A developmental frame goes only on things that actually serve development. The PorchHearth feeds are commerce on neighborly terms — real listings, people really selling — the honest difference being earned reputation, no pay-to-rank, no engagement optimization, no promoted placement. That is a real difference; it is not the absence of commerce, and we don't call it "not a marketplace." We surface it because a parent may want it, coarse + PII-safe, and we link out rather than transact.
4. Don't turn "optional" into "what a good parent would do." Attaching "for your child" to purchasable things makes the opt-in read as an obligation — and a parent who can't afford the tutor or the weekend away then reads the surface as a scorecard. Sincerity makes that worse, not better. So paid feeds are framed as availability ("here's what's nearby"), never as a measure of good parenting.
5. Badges say what they measure. great_with_kids is a household badge (earned from a neighbor's reviews across all their listings — meals, stays, anything), so it means "this neighbor is rated great with kids," never "this service is child-appropriate." Rendered as a neighbor signal, never a per-service safety check.
6. Parent-authored + parent-visible. A parent chooses what a child sees and can preview exactly what they see (the child-view hub). Nothing about a child is hidden from their parent, and nothing reaches a child the parent didn't enable.
7. Minors first. Real money, strangers, and anything a child could be exposed to stays gated behind explicit owner go-ahead + counsel (see FAMILY_KIDS_CHORES.md). The safe version ships; the risky version waits.

What we surface (today)

All opt-in, all default OFF. Two kinds, held apart on purpose:

Developmental (ours — the claim holds):

• Growth nudges (family-growth.ts) — a child's JQ avatar occasionally invites them into: make a story (EmberKiln), a kids audio story (graphene.fm), a citizen- science experiment (Open Energy), a Workout Window kids group, or one step on DreamPro. Ours, aimed squarely at development.
• Chores → credit (family-chores.ts) — intra-family only: a parent turns a chore into an attributed credit in the child's own points. No outside money, no strangers. The formative mechanic (effort → reward) without the marketplace.

A neighbor network (PorchHearth — described as what it is, family-community.ts):

• Community events — potlucks, playdates, garage sales, meetups. Non-commercial, local; the one PH feed that honestly is community involvement.
• Local services — neighbors offering paid work (babysitting/tutoring, but also lawn care/handyman/pet-sitting — mostly not child-related). A great_with_kids badge here is the neighbor's household reputation, not a per-service safety mark.
• Weekend getaways — nearby places to stay. A commercial rental, surfaced as availability ("here's what's near you"), never dressed as a child's development.

Commerce on neighborly terms (earned reputation, no pay-to-rank), not an ad feed — and not pretending to be anything other than commerce where it is.

Developmental tools (affiliate, family-dev-tools.ts — commerce, disclosed):

• Age-matched kits — Lovevery, KiwiCo and the like, filtered to the household's kids' age bands. An opt-in, default-OFF affiliate strip (dev_tools key). We may earn a referral commission and the copy says so plainly ("we may/we earn" flips only when a ref is actually configured — we don't claim a relationship we don't have). Framed as "picks that fit your child's age," never as a measure of good parenting (rule 4) and never dressed as pure development — a purchasable kit is a convenience, not a crossing. The developmental claim stays on our own growth nudges.

What we deliberately do NOT do

Watch a child for us. Sell a child's attention. Push an involvement a parent didn't choose. Let a kid touch external money or strangers without the gate. Turn a childhood into engagement metrics. If a surface starts to do any of these, it has left the spine.