BaoBao Lab
Learning technology, built on evidence
We build software that takes memory research seriously. Not gamified busywork, scheduling algorithms, speech processing and content pipelines that make daily practice actually produce recall.
Products
What we make
BaoBao Talk
Mandarin for beginners · iOS
A complete HSK 1 course: 300 characters with guided stroke practice, tone and pinyin training with native audio, speaking exercises scored on-device, and a review scheduler that decides what you see each day.
In development
The scheduling engine, audio pipeline and content tooling behind BaoBao Talk are built to be language-agnostic. Additional courses and levels are in progress on the same foundation.
Approach
Three principles
Schedule beats willpower
Deciding what to study is a tax on motivation and usually decided wrong. Our software makes that call with an algorithm and hands the learner one clear queue.
Production over recognition
Recognising an answer feels like knowing it and isn't. Every exercise we ship asks the learner to produce something, write it, build it, say it.
No attention economy
No ads, no tracking, no engagement traps. The business model is a subscription, so the product's incentive is that you learn and stay, not that you scroll.
Technology
How it's built
A small, deliberately boring stack, with the interesting work concentrated where it changes learning outcomes.
FSRS scheduling
A modern spaced-repetition scheduler models each item's stability, difficulty and retrievability per learner, rather than applying fixed multipliers.
On-device speech
Pronunciation practice runs through the phone's own speech recognition. Audio never leaves the device, and it works without a server round trip.
Generated audio, reviewed by humans
Daily listening content is drafted by a language model against a strict vocabulary whitelist, reviewed, then voiced with open-source text to speech.
Flutter and Django
One codebase for mobile, a small Python API behind Cloudflare, media on S3. Fewer moving parts means more time on the learning problem.
Start with Mandarin
Our first product teaches the whole HSK 1 syllabus in fifteen minutes a day. Free to start, no ads.