Frequently asked questions

Chess and Stilz is an independent publishing house. We make story experiences for kids who want to be in the story, not just read it. The legal entity is Chess and Stilz Co., LLC, based in the United States. We were founded by parents who want better stories for their own readers. The company is a small operation of people and technology working together, with editorial direction held by people.

The fastest way is email: hello@chessandstilz.com. If you’re reporting something a story did that it shouldn’t have, please include the story title and the reader profile name if you know it — that helps us trace it quickly.

Chess and Stilz stories are made by people, with the help of generative writing technology — what is often called AI. Here’s what that means in practice: the worlds, characters, story rules, and content boundaries are set by our editorial team. The technology produces the prose inside those rules. It does not choose what to write about, what is safe, or what to include. Every story is reviewed against our editorial framework before it reaches your reader. Our How our stories are made page walks through this in full.

Suicide and self-harm, sexual content, and other categories we treat as non-negotiable. These are never allowed in a Chess and Stilz story, at any age, for any reader. We won’t pretend the technology is perfect — generation can produce surprises — but this bar is one we own, not a claim we make. If something slips, write hello@chessandstilz.com. We’ll fix it, tell you what happened, and use it to tighten the system. The How our stories are made page covers how this works.

No. There is no chat, no messaging, no comments, no other users. A child reading a Chess and Stilz story is alone with the story.

The reader moves through a story by picking from written choices we’ve prepared — not by typing freely to a character. That’s a deliberate design choice, not a limitation we’ll outgrow. Open-ended input is where editorial control and safety standards get compromised, and we won’t trade those for a feature.

The parent portal is a separate surface for the adult on the account. We may add direct support channels there over time as the company grows. The reader experience stays free of chat by design.

The reader side is closed. Your child sees the stories, characters, and worlds available under their profile — nothing else. No store, no feed, no other readers, no ads, no open web. Account settings, billing, and content controls live in the parent portal, behind your PIN.

A child exploring the app on their own is exploring stories, not the company. That separation is deliberate. The kid surface is for reading. The parent surface is for decisions.

Two different things can happen here, and they have different responses.

If a story crossed a line we said it wouldn’t cross — something in a category we don’t allow, something violent or sexual, something that doesn’t belong in a Chess and Stilz story at all — that’s on us. Email hello@chessandstilz.com with the story title and the reader profile name if you have it. We’ll trace it, fix the system, and tell you what happened.

If a story was within our published bar but wasn’t right for your child — the fit was wrong, the tone landed harder than expected, your family’s line is tighter than our default — that’s a settings conversation. The parent portal has content controls per reader profile, and locked worlds like Stilz Dark stay closed until you open them. If a control doesn’t go far enough, tell us. That feedback shapes the next version.

We won’t ask you to defend why something didn’t sit right. You know your reader. We’re the publisher — it’s our job to give you the controls and the honesty to work with.

Not every story belongs on every shelf. Our open worlds are calibrated for readers nine and up by default. Some worlds carry stories with darker tone, sharper suspense, or themes that need a parent’s call rather than ours.

Those worlds are locked by default on every reader profile. The lock leads to the parent portal. Opening a locked world requires your PIN and is set per reader profile, so you can open it for one child and leave it closed for another. You can close it again at any time.

If a child asks about a locked world and you’re not sure, our suggestion is to open it for that reader and read the first chapter together. You’ll know within a few pages whether it’s right for your reader. That’s the honest version of how this call gets made.

Stilz Dark is our first locked world, in development now. There will be others.

The Chess and Stilz promise is worlds a child can actually explore, with choices that change the story. No team of authors, at any scale, can deliver that. Generative technology can — but only inside an editorial framework that defines the worlds, the characters, the safety register, and the content controls.

Generation produces the prose. The editorial framework decides what’s allowed, who the characters are, what tone the world carries, and what a story will never include. Every story is reviewed against that framework before it reaches your reader. Generation alone is not a children’s product. Editorial alone can’t deliver the promise. The two together are what makes Chess and Stilz possible.

That’s the trade-off, named honestly: you accept that the product is built this way, you get the kind of stories we’re making. You don’t, and this isn’t the product for your family. We mean that as clarity, not dismissal.

Very little, by design. We built Chess and Stilz so the editorial system needs almost nothing from your child to do its job.

The account email belongs to you, not your child. Stripe handles card processing; we don’t store card numbers. Your child’s reader profile uses a name you choose — a nickname or a character name is encouraged — and an age that lets us calibrate which stories and worlds are available. As your child reads, we track which story they’re in, which choices they’ve made within it, and which worlds you’ve unlocked for them. That’s what makes the product work.

We do not collect birthdates, addresses, school information, photos, voice, contacts, or real-world identifiers about your child. We do not sell reading activity. We do not share reading activity with third parties for advertising.

Today, our generation vendors do not train their models on your child’s reading. The AI landscape is changing fast, and we want room to choose better tools as they appear — but if that ever changes, we will tell you what changed and why before it does.

The privacy policy is the binding document. This is the short version.

Once a week, you’ll get the Reader Recap — a note from us about how your child is spending their time in our worlds. It comes in two parts.

The Letter is written in the voice of your child’s World Guide. If they spent most of their week in Wonderland, Chess writes it. If they spent it in Stilz Folk, Stilz writes it. It tells you, in plain English, what your child has been doing in the stories — what they explored, what choices they made, where they lingered. No scores. No grades. No reading-level metrics. A note from a publisher to a parent, in a voice your child would recognize.

The Snapshot is the factual side. Session count, total time spent, which worlds were visited, and one-click prompts when something useful comes up — a world your reader seems ready for, a setting worth a second look, a conversation starter for the week ahead. The link in the email opens the parent portal where the actual change happens, behind your PIN.

The Reader Recap is the only place where information about your child’s reading flows out of the system, and it flows only to you, on the account email. You can adjust how often it arrives, or turn it off entirely, in the parent portal.

Chess and Stilz is currently designed for readers nine and up. That’s the floor for our open worlds — the bar we calibrate stories and worlds to by default.

Some readers nine and up will be ready for more than the floor. Some won’t be ready for everything in the open shelf. The parent portal has content controls per reader profile so you can shape the experience around the reader you actually have, not the reader an age number predicts.

As your child grows, the editorial register of the stories grows with them. The vocabulary deepens, the emotional stakes broaden, the worlds open up. This happens once a year, on the anniversary of when you joined us, and we send you a heads-up email thirty days before each shift so you can choose to keep things where they are. Our safety floor does not move with age — what we’ll never include in a story stays the same for every reader, at every age.

Your child opens the app, picks a world, and steps into a story. As they read, they’re given choices that shape what happens next — not multiple-choice questions, not a quiz, but moments where the story branches based on what they decide. A brave choice and a careful choice send the story in different directions. The reading and the choosing are the whole experience.

At launch, your child can explore Wonderland, where Chess and Stilz keep finding mischief and trouble keeps finding them. More worlds are in the works — Grimm Fairy Tales is on the desk, Grimmer Fairy Tales is in revisions, and Oz Is Real is still finding its voice in the margins.

There’s no chat, no other users, no feed. Just the story your child is in.

Yes, and we’re not there yet. We’re working toward WCAG 2.1 AA conformance — the standard for digital accessibility in the United States and most of the world — but the app at launch won’t meet that bar fully. Screen reader support, audio narration of stories, dyslexia-friendly type options, and other access features are real workstreams for us, not afterthoughts — but they’re on the build list, not in the launch.

If your child has specific access needs we should know about, write to us at hello@chessandstilz.com. We’ll tell you honestly what works today and what doesn’t, and your note will shape what we build next.

We haven’t set pricing yet. We’re still working out what’s fair for families and sustainable for us as a small publishing house — pricing is one of the last decisions we’ll make before launch, and we want to get it right rather than guess.

What we can tell you: Chess and Stilz will be subscription-based, with the parent as the paying customer. The waitlist is for early news, not for billing — when we open the doors, you’ll see pricing and decide whether to subscribe. Joining the waitlist doesn’t sign you up for anything you haven’t chosen.

We don’t have a launch date yet. We’ve said it elsewhere on this site and we’ll say it here: we can only launch once, and if it takes a little longer to make it right, it takes a little longer.

What “ready” means to us: the editorial framework is sound, the safety architecture works, and the worlds we ship feel like worlds and not demos. We’re working through that list now. When the list is done, the doors open.

The waitlist gets the news first — sign up at the top of this page if you haven’t yet.