What it does
Newsie is a free, personal-project website that works like a kid-friendly newspaper. A script automatically gathers recent stories from the Guardian, NASA and Wikinews feeds for science and space variety. An AI model, using a free-tier API, rewrites each story at a younger reading level (starting with about grade 4, with options for older ages later). It stays faithful to the original and adds no new facts. Each rewritten story includes a short headline, a simple summary, a “why it matters” explanation, and three vocabulary words with kid-friendly definitions. The AI also flags stories that ar Built for Kids who take an interest in what's going on in the world, ages 8 - 12..
What a real user taught us
The app seemed a bit sharp, and not approachable like I initially wanted, so I changed some fonts and stylization to make it seem more kid - friendly.
A safety issue we fixed
I noticed that certain articles had changed their headlines, and people ended up searching for the wrong original article and getting facts confused. Now at the end of every Newsie article, there's a link to the original NASA or Guardian site to view the article before the rewriting.
What we would build next
I would add more articles and have them automatically update, and try to find more topics for heftier reads.