Funding
Fund the tools, not the walled garden
Asakiri is an open authoring app, an open course format, and an open learner app. Funding goes to finishing that chain so a teacher never has to rent their own course back from a platform.
The problem
Most language-learning platforms own both halves: the software and the courses made with it. A teacher who spends a year building a course cannot take it elsewhere, cannot read it without the app, and cannot hand it to their community in a form that outlives the company.
Small language communities come off worst. A language with ten thousand speakers is not a market, so no platform builds for it. Teachers end up with a folder of slides, a spreadsheet of vocabulary, and no way to turn either into something a learner can practise with.
What Asakiri changes
Every step is separable, and every step is replaceable. Nothing in the chain requires an Asakiri account, an Asakiri server, or Asakiri's permission.
- TeacherOwns the course and picks its licence
- Asakiri StudioOpen source desktop editor, works offline
- Open course formatPlain JSON files, published schemas
- Git, GitHub, a USB stickStorage is the author's choice
- Asakiri Learner or any clientOpen format means anyone can build one
A course is a directory of small JSON files on the author's own disk. It is readable in a text editor, diffable in Git, and valid against schemas anyone can check against.
The public goods
Five artefacts, each usable without the others.
Authoring softwareAlpha, released
Asakiri Studio: content records, media, rich text, and seven kinds of graded exercise, on macOS, Windows, and Linux. MPL-2.0.
Course format and schemasPublished
Version 1 of the on-disk format, with JSON Schemas so validators, editors, and players can be built against a contract rather than by reading our source.
Learner applicationIn development
An open source client that reads the format, runs the exercises, and tracks progress by stable IDs so reordering a course never loses a learner's place.
Documentation and toolingPartly shipped
A docs site covering the data model and the wire format, a course validator, and the deterministic importers that turn spreadsheets and documents into courses.
Freely distributable coursesBy design
Authors choose their own open licence and publish a course as a Git tag anyone can clone. No registry gatekeeping, no revenue share.
What funding enables
Studio is built and shipping. The gap is the other end of the chain, and the packaging work that makes both ends trustworthy to install.
| Milestone | What ships | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Learner application, first release | A client that opens any format-v1 course offline, runs all seven exercise types, and keeps progress keyed to stable IDs. Android and iOS from one Flutter codebase. | 4 months |
| Import from documents | Turn a PDF, Word file, or slide deck into lessons and rich text, with a mapping step the author confirms before anything is written. Deterministic parsing, no model involved. | 2 months |
| Multilingual course authoring | The format already stores text per language. This adds the editing surface, so one course can carry Japanese and English interface text and a translator can work without touching JSON. | 1.5 months |
| Signed, packaged, installable | Windows code signing so installs stop warning, plus Flathub and Snap packaging for Linux. Removes the largest install-time barrier for non-technical teachers. | 1 month |
| Format spec and reference tooling | A versioned spec site, a standalone command-line validator, and a reference reader library, so a third party can build a compatible client without reading Studio's source. | 1.5 months |
Talk to us
For grants, partnerships, or anything that needs a conversation, email is best. For ongoing support, Patreon funds the same work at whatever scale you like.