What your teen gets
Tessera is a conversational AI companion for teens aged 14 to 19. It gets to know your kid through short, casual chats, not clinical assessments or one-time quizzes. Each conversation fills in another piece of their personal picture, building an understanding of their interests, personality, and strengths over weeks and months.
This is not a single test that spits out a list of jobs. Tessera is a long-term companion that grows smarter the more your teen uses it.
Why this is safe
We designed Tessera with safety as a first principle, for your teen and for your family.
What we collect (and why)
From your teen:
- First name (so Tessera knows what to call them)
- Age and birthday month/day (to adapt the conversation to their age)
- Grade level (to provide age-appropriate context)
- Gender (optional, can be skipped)
- State (to understand regional context)
- School type: public, private, charter, or homeschool (for relevant conversation topics)
- GPA range (optional, can be skipped)
- Session summaries (short recaps of each conversation, not the full conversation text)
- Interest and personality insights derived from those conversations
None of this is personally identifiable. We never ask for a last name, email, phone number, or address. Even we cannot look up a specific teen by name, because there is nothing to search by.
From you: name, email address, and relationship to the teen. That is it.
All data is stored securely in the cloud, encrypted and protected. We never sell or disclose any data to third parties for advertising, analytics, or marketing. The only third-party services that receive data are our infrastructure and AI providers (Anthropic and AWS), solely to operate the app.
What the AI does (and does not do)
The AI asks questions and provides positive encouragement. That is all.
- It does not give advice or suggestions.
- It does not lead your teen toward any particular answer or direction.
- It does not take any actions on behalf of your teen.
- It does not use conversations for AI training or share them with third parties beyond what is needed to operate the service.
Tessera's AI is provided by Anthropic (makers of Claude). Each message is processed in real time. Anthropic may temporarily retain API data for up to 30 days for trust and safety purposes, after which it is deleted. Under Anthropic's API terms, your teen's conversations are not used to train their models.
The AI adapts its tone and language to your teen's age; younger teens get a more playful, scenario-based style, while older students get a more direct and practical tone. Your teen can choose their preferred conversation style during setup.
Built-in guardrails
Every single response your teen gives is evaluated in real time across multiple dimensions: relevance to the topic, tone, politeness, and whether there is any attempt to manipulate or misuse the conversation. If a response falls outside acceptable bounds, Tessera flags it immediately. Repeated issues stop the session automatically.
This is not a simple keyword filter. Tessera uses a dedicated AI model to evaluate each answer on a numeric scale before the conversation moves forward. Off-topic, hostile, or manipulative inputs are caught and handled before they can affect the experience.
Age-appropriate by design
Tessera is for ages 14 to 19 only. Users under 14 are blocked during setup. The app does not collect any information that could identify your teen as a person. Your teen's conversations are private. You can see their interest and personality insights if they choose to share them, but never the conversations themselves.
Try it yourself
Still not sure? You can create your own Tessera account and go through the same conversations your teen would have. See the questions, the tone, and the experience firsthand before your teen ever opens the app.
What Tessera is not
- Not a general chatbot. Tessera cannot talk about anything. It has one job: career discovery through structured conversations. It cannot be used for homework, socializing, or open-ended chat.
- Not a therapist or counselor. Tessera does not provide mental health support, emotional advice, or personal guidance of any kind.
- Not a social companion. Tessera does not initiate contact. It does not send messages. Your teen picks it up when they want to use it and puts it down when they are done.
- Not a recommendation engine. Tessera does not push your teen toward specific schools, careers, or decisions. It helps them understand themselves. The choices are always theirs.
What a conversation looks like
Here is a typical exchange so you can see the tone and content for yourself:
Tessera: If you could spend a whole Saturday doing anything, what would you pick?
Alex: Probably hang out with friends and play basketball, then stay in and watch a movie.
Tessera: Nice, that's a good mix.
Tessera: When you're hanging out with your friends, are you usually the one making plans, or do you go with whatever the group decides?
Alex: I usually suggest stuff but I don't really care if we do something else.
Tessera: Got it, thanks for sharing.
Tessera: What about when you're on your own? Do you like having a plan for the day, or do you just see what happens?
That is it. Questions, short acknowledgments, more questions. No advice, no judgment, no steering. Tessera listens, learns, and moves on.
Take the pressure off
"What do you want to do with your life?" is one of the hardest questions a teen can hear, and one of the hardest for a parent to ask without it turning into a tense conversation. Tessera takes that pressure out of the equation. Your teen explores these questions at their own pace, in their own words, through natural conversations with an AI that just listens and asks good questions.
When insights emerge, your teen can choose to share them with you, giving you both something concrete to talk about instead of starting from scratch every time.
What you get as the picture grows
Tessera's insights unlock progressively as your teen engages. Here is what each level looks like:
After a few conversations
An early snapshot of your teen's career interests. Which areas light them up (hands-on work, creative projects, helping people, leading, research, or structured tasks). Enough to start a conversation at home.
After about a week of regular use
A full interest picture across all six career dimensions. You can see where your teen's interests are strongest and how they compare to each other. This is when career direction starts to take shape.
After a couple of weeks
Personality insights begin to appear: how your teen thinks, communicates, handles stress, and relates to others. These traits are just as important as interests when it comes to finding the right fit.
After several weeks of engagement
Interests and personality combine into a unified picture. Tessera can now identify where interests and personality traits reinforce each other, and where they might create friction. This is where the real career guidance begins: not just "what do you like?" but "what would you thrive at?"
With sustained, deeper engagement
A clearer, more detailed picture of who your teen is. Tessera has enough data to make specific, well-supported career path suggestions and connect them to concrete next steps: college programs, fields of study, and preparation strategies.
After months of regular check-ins
Longitudinal tracking kicks in. Tessera can now show how your teen's interests and personality have evolved over time, showing which directions have strengthened, which have shifted, and what that means for their path forward. This kind of long-term perspective is something no single assessment can offer.
Built on proven science
Tessera is not guessing. It uses two well-established frameworks from vocational and personality psychology: one that maps career interests across six dimensions (hands-on, investigative, creative, social, leadership, and organizational), and another that maps five core personality traits (curiosity, discipline, sociability, empathy, and emotional sensitivity).
Together, these two models let Tessera do something powerful: map your teen's interests onto career paths, then check whether their personality is a natural fit for those paths. It can pick up on synergies, like a creative teen who also thrives on structure (great for architecture or UX design). It can also flag potential friction points early, like strong social interests paired with a preference for working independently.
A study that grows over time
Most career assessments are a snapshot. Tessera is a longitudinal study of your teen. Interests shift. Personality matures. New experiences open new doors. Tessera tracks all of this across weeks and months, so the picture keeps getting sharper and more accurate as your teen grows.
The full pipeline, in one place
Once Tessera maps out who your teen is, it connects the dots to real career paths, and then to concrete next steps: SAT and ACT prep tailored to target schools, college matching based on their actual profile, application guidance, essay coaching, and scholarship discovery.