How to use TinyGuard AI
TinyGuard AI is an assistant for the writing-heavy parts of care work — daily reports, observation notes, parent messages, lesson plans, incident write-ups. It turns what your team already logs into clear, ready-to-edit text. It does not run your facility on autopilot and it does not watch your cameras. This page is the feature tour: what each AI feature is, where to find it, and how to get a good result.
1. The one rule that matters
AI drafts. A human reviews, edits, and approves. Nothing the AI writes is sent to a parent or saved to an official record until a staff member has read it and chosen to use it.
Every AI draft also shows a source trail — the actual records it wrote from — so you can check its work in one glance before you trust it.
2. Turning AI on
AI is an optional add-on, not part of any base plan:
- $50/month, on top of any TinyGuard subscription, including 1,500 AI units/month (plenty — see §6).
- Turn it on or off anytime from Billing → Add-ons. It pro-rates from the day you switch it on; turning it off leaves the rest of your plan untouched.
If the add-on isn't active, the AI features still appear in the app but show an "Add AI to your plan" prompt instead of generating. Cameras, attendance, EVV (elder), billing, the parent portal, and manual report writing all work exactly as before — only the AI drafting waits on the add-on.
3. The feature catalog
Each entry tells you what it does, where to find it, and a tip. Most features are a button — look for the ✨ sparkle icon or a Generate with AI / AI Draft action on the relevant page.
Daily documentation
- Daily Reports — drafts each child's (or resident's) daily report from the day's logged care entries. Classroom → Daily Reports. Tip: the more your team logs, the richer the draft — AI can't invent a nap that wasn't recorded.
- Daily Narrative — a warm, room-level story of the whole day. Family → Communications → Daily Narrative. Tip: generate once per room per day; regenerate if the log changed.
- Observation drafts — turn a jotted note into a framed developmental observation, tagged to the right domains. Classroom → Learning → Observations, and the Quick Observe button. Tip: write the note in your own words; AI handles the framing.
- Photo captions — suggests a caption for photos in a child's feed. Classroom → Photos.
Family communication
- Parent Messages — drafts individual messages to families. The AI Draft button in Family → Communications. Tip: tell it the situation and tone; always read before sending.
- Newsletters — drafts a full classroom or facility newsletter from a few prompts. Family → Communications → Newsletter.
- Translations — translates a message or document into a family's preferred language. The Translation tool, and inline on outgoing messages. Tip: for anything sensitive, have a fluent speaker glance at it.
Curriculum (childcare)
- AI Lesson Plans — a balanced week of activities across developmental domains, editable slot by slot, with an optional parent digest. Classroom → Learning → Lesson Plans. Tip: generate the skeleton, then swap in your signature activities.
Child development & screening
- AI Summaries — pulls a child's recent records into a readable summary: daily, weekly, conference-prep, and gentle pattern flags. The AI Summaries page. Tip: conference-prep mode is the standout — walk into a parent meeting with the term already summarized.
- Care Suggestions — next-step ideas grounded in a child's or resident's care record. Tip: suggestions, not instructions — your judgment applies.
- M-CHAT screening help — assists with the M-CHAT questionnaire and follow-up. Tip: clinical interpretation stays with qualified staff.
Safety & incidents
- Incident draft & field extraction — turns your account into a structured incident report and auto-fills required state/compliance fields. Health → Incidents. Tip: describe events plainly and review every extracted field — these can be official records.
- Root-cause analysis (RCA) — drafts an RCA narrative to support your review and prevention steps. Health → Incidents → review/trends.
Elder care
- Discharge planning summaries — drafts a discharge summary from the resident's care record. Discharge Planning, and the Bed Board. Tip: clinical review before anything leaves the building.
- Care summaries — the elder-care equivalents of the daily/weekly summaries and care suggestions, framed for residents.
Running the business
- Hiring & offer letters — drafts candidate-facing copy and offer letters. The Hiring page (Staff).
- Performance review drafts — a starting point for a staff review from your notes. Staff → HR & Performance.
- Room-staffing optimizer — suggests a staffing arrangement given ratios and attendance. Staff → Scheduling → Room Staffing.
- Lead response drafts — drafts fast replies to enrollment inquiries. The Leads / enrollment inbox. Tip: personalize the opening line; speed plus a human touch wins tours.
4. For parents
You don't run these tools — your child's center does — but here's the AI you may notice:
- Messages and reports may be AI-assisted. A staff member always reviews and approves before anything reaches you — the words come from people who know your child.
- Translation. Your center can send communications translated into your preferred language.
- Your child is never analyzed by camera AI. TinyGuard's AI works from the care records staff log — not from video, and never with face recognition or other biometrics (see §6).
5. Getting great results
- Log as you go. AI writes from what your team records. A well-logged day produces a great draft; a sparse one produces a sparse draft.
- Be specific when you prompt. "A reassuring, short note to the Lee family about a hard drop-off" beats "write a message."
- Always review before it leaves. You catch what the AI couldn't know — and you're accountable for the record.
- Regenerate freely, and edit rather than restart. Accept-then-tweak is almost always faster than writing from scratch.
6. Budget, privacy & trust
Your add-on includes 1,500 units/month; each AI action spends a small number depending on its size. In practice almost no facility comes close to the ceiling. You can watch usage on your AI usage view. If you ever hit the monthly limit, AI pauses until the next monthly reset — and everything else keeps working normally, including saving reports manually.
- Need a higher allowance? Running a large multi-site operation — contact us.
- Bring your own API key (BYOK)? Available — contact us. BYOK calls show in your usage view but don't count against your monthly budget.
Human in the loop, always. AI drafts; staff approve. Source trail on every draft. Your data isn't used to train AI models — providers operate under business agreements (BAAs) that keep your facility's data private and out of model training. No biometrics — ever: no face recognition, gait analysis, or biometric identification. This is a permanent product covenant, not a setting.
7. FAQ & troubleshooting
"Add AI to your plan" appears instead of a draft. The add-on isn't active — turn it on at Billing → Add-ons ($50/mo). Everything non-AI keeps working without it.
"Already generated for today." Some daily features generate once per room per day to save units. Use Regenerate if the data changed, or pick a different date.
"AI is not configured." A temporary facility setup issue, not your account — contact support; your manual workflows are unaffected.
A draft has a detail wrong. Expected — that's why you review before sending. Edit or regenerate, and check the source trail; a wrong detail often means a record needs fixing too.
Can a parent see that something was AI-assisted? Parents see the final, staff-approved message — written and approved by people. The AI is a drafting tool, like spellcheck, not the author of record.