Alibaba Cloud × Qoder Hackathon · Singapore 2026
TaleLah
Everyday moments.
Mother-tongue magic.
Made for Singapore families 中文 · Melayu · தமிழ்
Vinoth · Sibi · Kavya
Every evening in Singapore

Three homes. Three mother tongues. The same evening.

中文
“今天在学校做了什么？”
Parent asks in Mandarin.
The child answers in English.
Melayu
“Apa yang kamu buat di sekolah?”
Parent asks in Malay.
The child answers in English.
தமிழ்
“இன்று பள்ளியில் என்ன செய்தே?”
Parent asks in Tamil.
The child answers in English.
What's actually happening

They can speak it. But they can't think in it.

The words home gives them
吃饭 eat
air water
வா come

Everyday, concrete, unchanging.

The words school gives them — in English
bigger & smaller
the pattern
why does it…?

Every new idea arrives in English. The mother tongue stops growing with the child.

Singapore, every community

Homes where English is spoken most often

2020
48.3%
2025
58.1%
+9.8 points in five years — and higher among young children
Singapore Dept. of Statistics · Census 2020 & General Household Survey 2025
Why another lessons app can't fix it

School gives lessons. Only home gives use.

More drills is more of exactly what already isn't working. A language survives when a child has a reason to speak it after school.

So we built
TaleLah

Turn today's moment into tonight's mother-tongue conversation.

A parent types one line about their child's day. Five minutes later the family is talking — in Chinese, Malay or Tamil.

WWei Ming
What did Wei Ming do today?
Tell me anything…
“He built an MRT out of blocks”
or “Explain how frogs live”
中文 Create
Try one of these
How frogs live A ride on the MRT Helping in the kitchen Why does it rain?
Story library
How it works

Thirty seconds of a parent's time.

WWei Ming
What did Wei Ming do today?
He lined up his toy cars
from big to small.
中文 Create
Try one of these
How frogs live Why does it rain?
STEP 1
Capture
Type, speak or snap a photo.
4 / 4 READY
小车排排队
Page 1 · The little cars line up
谁最大？
Page 2 · Which one is biggest?
说说看！
Page 3 · Your turn to say it
一起数一数
Page 4 · Count them together
Approve & give to child
STEP 2
Approve
Nothing reaches the child unseen.
LISTENING
红色的车最大！ hóng sè de chē zuì dà
tap & talk to Mina
STEP 3
Child speaks
Mina listens for one real line.
问问他：
哪一辆最小？ ask which one is smallest
Hand the phone over
STEP 4
Family takes over
The screen switches itself off.
Identical flow in 中文 · Melayu · தமிழ் — the language is a setting, not a rebuild.
Live

Demo

  • 01A real moment in — a whole book out, in seconds
  • 02The child speaks a line and the story answers
  • 03It ends by handing the phone to the family
Open the live appapp.talelah.com
Tap to launch — or run it from your own phone.
The part that isn't a story app

Every other AI story app wants more screen time.

Ours gives it back.

Off-screen mission

The screen goes quiet and waits while the child does something real in the room.

Family handoff

One prompt, one big button — a parent or grandparent finishes the story out loud.

Find something in the room
the same colour. the screen is waiting… I'm back!
How three of us built it in two weeks

We didn't write features. We wrote specs.

WRITTEN BY US
The spec
/specs — six agents, three languages, every safety rule.
BUILT BY QODER
The quest
Quest Mode plans it, writes it and checks its own work.
SHIPPED
The product
A running app, live on three domains today.
Qoder — Quest: “Analyze full scope” · 29 Jul 2026
A Qoder Quest session auditing TaleLah's acceptance criteria and adding the missing route-level tests.
Real session — Quest Mode closing the AC-02 / AC-04 / AC-09 test gap
The architecture

Six agents, one pipeline.

Moment LensReads the photo or note.Qwen-VL
Learning PlannerPicks one speaking goal.Qwen
Book AuthorDesigns the whole book.per-language
Language GuardianChecks every native line./specs/lang
Family VoiceNarrates & hands off.CosyVoice·Sarvam
Growth CoachRemembers, never scores.Qwen

A safety gate sits between the pipeline and the child — nothing reaches child mode without passing it and the parent.

The proof

One moment. One codebase. Three mother tongues.

Language pack
zh-SG
弟弟坐在绿色的叶子上。
Language pack
ms-SG
Adik sedang duduk di atas daun hijau.
Language pack
ta-SG
தம்பி பச்சை இலையில் உட்கார்ந்திருக்கிறது.
$ grep -rn "ta-SG\|zh-SG\|ms-SG" backend/agents backend/adapters backend/safety
(no matches — exit 1) · every locale lives in backend/packs/*.json
$ git status --porcelain
(empty) — working tree clean, before and after the swap
Under the hood

The best model for each language.

JobChineseMalayTamil
Story writingQwen-MaxQwen-MaxSarvam-105B
Photo understandingQwen-VL-Max — all three
Child speechParaformerGoogle STTSaarika
NarrationCosyVoiceGoogle TTSBulbul
IllustrationsWanx — one character, locked across every page
Who it's for

Every Singaporean child learns a mother tongue at school.

It is national policy — and there are exactly three. TaleLah serves all of them from one engine.

中文
Chinese
Simplified characters with pinyin for the parent.
Melayu
Malay
Everyday Bahasa, with meaning where it helps.
தமிழ்
Tamil
Written natively, not translated from English.
Built in Singapore, for Singapore — a fourth language would be a new spec file, not a rebuild.
The team
Vinoth
Vinoth
Tech
Sibi
Sibi
Tech
Kavya
Kavya
Tutor

Two engineers and a tutor who teaches these children every week.

Thank you

Capture once, help everywhere.

And bring the language home.

Try it yourselfapp.talelah.com talelah.com
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Made in Singapore · Alibaba Cloud × Qoder Hackathon 2026
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