Academics
DebateForge
Competitive Speech & Debate Arena for ages 10-14 — master argumentation by researching evidence, building cases, delivering speeches, and competing in AI-judged debate tournaments where steelmanning, civil disagreement, and concession craft determine the strongest debater. Aligned to CCSS Speaking & Listening standards.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, praises, and patiently scaffolds learning. On-device AI personalizes the mentor's responses to your kid's progress — never connecting to a server, never collecting data.
Mentored by Rhetor
#4A6FA5 DebateForge is a competitive debate arena where you research evidence, build cases, deliver speeches, and compete in AI-judged tournaments. Learn to steelman opposing views, identify fallacies, deliver effective rebuttals, and change your mind in light of better evidence — debate craft as civil-discourse skill, not argument-as-weapon.
Distributed-narrative cast
Meet the cast
DebateForge's 5-character cast embodies the foundational argumentation primitives per NSDA + Toulmin (claim/warrant/data) + steelman tradition — case-construction (Build), evidence-evaluation (Weigh), steelmanning-the-opposing-view (Steel), civil-rebuttal-not-rebuke (Reply), and changing-your-mind-in-light-of-evidence-as-strength (Yield). Rhetor(mentor — Greek: speaker; classical-academic register parallel to Veritas + Cura; non-religious) frames each primitive; cast embodies them at school-debate-club / family-dinner-disagreement / community-forum scale (NEVER national-debate-champion / pundit / lawyer / politician framing). Polarization-amplification gate enforced: cast NEVER positions disagreement as combat; banned vocabulary 'crush/destroy/own/demolish/rekt' in cast voice + AI opponent + AI judge; Steel's structural presence from kit 5 onward names 'best version of opposing view BEFORE arguing with it' as load-bearing; debate-arena scoring measures CRAFT MOVES (citation quality + steelman fidelity + civil rebuttal + evidence weighing + concession) NOT raw winning. Bullying-register gate enforced: Reply's 'I disagree because' structurally distinct from 'you're wrong because'. Identity-debate avoidance gate enforced (CRITICAL): kit 9 explicit content rule + AI opponent topic-filter REQUIRED — never debate marginalized identities' validity. No real-politicians + no real-debaters mascotization. External sensitivity reviewer with debate-pedagogy + civil-discourse + youth-conflict-resolution + identity-affirming-pedagogy expertise REQUIRED for kit 9 + AI opponent topic-filter audit.
Build
Case-construction — claim + warrant + evidence as architecture; what does your case REQUIRE to stand?
Read chapter →
Weigh
Evidence-evaluation — sources have positions, evidence has limits; credibility-as-calibration (shared design language with TruthQuest Weigh — cross-app continuity)
Read chapter →
Steel
Steelmanning the opposing view — strongest version of what they would say IF you let them; visibly holds up opposing-view-card with two hands
Read chapter →
Reply
Civil-rebuttal-not-rebuke — 'I disagree because' not 'you're wrong because'; address the ARGUMENT not the PERSON
Read chapter →
Yield
Changing-your-mind-in-light-of-evidence-as-strength — concession is craft + intellectual courage; visibly carries 'updated' badge (shared design language with TruthQuest Update — cross-app continuity)
Read chapter →
Browse all 5 chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Competitive Speech & Debate Arena for ages 10-14 — master argumentation by researching evidence, building cases, delivering speeches, and competing in AI-judged debate tournaments where steelmanning, civil disagreement, and concession craft determine the strongest debater. Aligned to CCSS Speaking & Listening standards.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned kits × 25 questions = 400 questions per app, mapped to recognized standards.
On-device AI mentor
FoundationModels-powered hints, feedback, and adaptive difficulty — all running locally.
Mentored by Rhetor — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How DebateForge handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ No ads, no in-app purchases — you pay once
- ✅ COPPA compliant under the 2026 FTC amendments
- ✅ Parental controls + session limits + content filters built in
DebateForge runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
DebateForge is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch