Terms and Privacy

StarCode, by Star Kids Academy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Last updated 23 September 2026.

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1. What StarCode is

StarCode is a coding app. Blocks are dragged on one side of the screen and the same program appears as real Python, C++ or Java on the other. It runs in a web browser and can also be installed on a computer, phone or Chromebook. It can connect to a real robot over USB or Bluetooth and run the program on it.

It is built for children from about six years old, through high school, and for adults learning to code for the first time.

StarCode is made by Star Kids Academy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, in Cupertino, California.

2. What is free, and what is not

The blocks, the code, the robots, the remote control page and the handbook are free to use. No email address and no account are needed for any of it.

The StarCode Tutor, the teacher portal and student records come with a teacher or parent plan.

3. Getting in

There are no user accounts and no passwords anywhere in StarCode.

The free version is simply opened and used. For the paid parts, a school is given a class code, which students type in. Teachers have a separate teacher code, which students are not given. The two do different things, and section 6 explains what each one opens.

4. What we store

The free version: nothing on our side

If you are using the free version, nothing about you is sent to us and nothing about you is kept on our servers. There is no account to create and no email address to give.

Your work is saved in your own browser, in what browsers call local storage. It stays on that device. These are the only things StarCode keeps there:

• sc_projects and sc_auto_v1 - the programs you built
• sc_lang - which of the 22 languages you chose
• sc_access_v2 - a class code, if one was typed in

Clearing your browser's site data deletes all of it, including your programs. Because it lives on your device and not on ours, we cannot get it back for you. Save anything you want to keep.

A class with a code: the student record

A class has a record on our side so its teacher can see how students are getting on. About a student it holds only this:

• the first name the student types, which can be a nickname
• the lesson they are on and the steps they have finished
• the skills they have earned
• the points where the app saw them struggle, such as a lesson opened and not finished, or a step repeated several times

What is deliberately not stored

• no last names
• no email addresses, phone numbers or home addresses
• no dates of birth and no ages
• no photographs
• no attendance
• nothing a student types to the Tutor, and nothing the Tutor answers

These are records about children, so the less held the better, and none of the above is needed to see how a student is getting on.

5. The Tutor

The Tutor is the panel a student can ask questions in. It comes with a plan. Questions are sent to Anthropic's API, which produces the answer. Anthropic acts as our subprocessor for that one purpose.

What is sent is the question, the recent back and forth in that panel, the program currently on the canvas, and which robot is plugged in. No name, no class record and no contact details are attached.

The answer comes straight back to the screen. StarCode does not store the question or the answer. The only thing recorded is a daily count of how many questions a class has asked, so the cost cannot run away.

Nothing typed into StarCode is used to train an AI model. Not by us, and not by Anthropic on our behalf. What the Tutor knows about StarCode is written into its instructions and read fresh every single time, so it is not trained on anybody's work.

The Tutor answers only questions about coding in StarCode, and turns anything else away. It is told not to write the program for the student. If a student says something worrying, it is told not to counsel them but to say kindly that this is something to tell a teacher or a grown-up they trust. An AI can still get things wrong, so a teacher or parent should stay involved.

6. Who can see a class

Every record is tied to the class it belongs to, and every read is filtered by that class.

• A class code lets a student use the class. On its own it opens no reports at all.
• A teacher code opens the reports for that one class, and only that class. One teacher cannot open another teacher's class.

7. Cookies and browser storage

StarCode sets one cookie, which keeps a class signed in. The chosen language and the signed-in state are kept in the browser's own storage, as listed in section 4.

None of it is used for advertising.

Four pages carry Google's tag: the front page at starcoderobot.com, the handbook, the help desk and the teacher portal. It counts how many people arrive, where they arrived from, and how many of them go on to open StarCode. Those four pages are the only places it runs.

There is no tag and no tracker of any kind inside StarCode itself, so nothing a child does in the app is tracked, measured or sent anywhere, and nothing they type is kept.

8. Deleting records

You do this yourself, at any time, without asking us and without waiting on us. In the teacher portal:

• Remove this class deletes that class and the records of every student in it.
• Delete next to a student removes that one student's record.

Both are immediate and both are permanent. There is no copy kept behind them, so nothing is left for us to hold on to.

9. Where the data is held

StarCode is hosted on Netlify. Student progress is stored using Netlify's own storage service. Payments are handled by Stripe: card numbers are typed on Stripe's page, never reach us, and are never stored by us.

10. Robots

Robots connect straight from the browser, over Bluetooth or a USB cable. Programs and robot data do not pass through our servers at any point.

StarCode drives real motors, real lights and real circuits, and a program can make something move without warning.

• An adult should be nearby when a robot is connected.
• Keep fingers, hair and loose clothing away from moving parts.
• Follow the instructions that came with the robot, especially about batteries and charging.
• On boards where wires are connected by hand, wiring a pin wrongly can damage the board. StarCode warns about the pins it knows are unsafe, but the wiring is yours to check.

You are responsible for what you build and for supervising anyone who uses it.

11. Security

Plainly, what is in place:

• The whole site is served over HTTPS. Everything between the browser and us is encrypted.
• Codes are checked on our server, never inside the page, so they cannot be read from the page source. The same is true of the key that talks to Anthropic.
• Repeated wrong codes from the same place are blocked for a period. A correct code always goes through and clears the count, so a room of students fumbling their code is never locked out of its own lesson.
• A signed pass. Typing a real code gets the browser a small pass signed by our server, so nobody can write their own. It is marked HttpOnly, which means no script running on the page can read it or copy it out, and it expires and is renewed.
• Signatures are compared safely, in a way that takes the same amount of time whether a guess was close or nowhere near, so a signature cannot be worked out one character at a time.
• Limits on the Tutor. A cap on how much text one question may carry, and a cap on how many questions a class may ask in a day.
• One file per student, so two students working at the same moment cannot overwrite each other.
• Records separated by class, as described in section 6.
• The Tutor is held to its subject on the server as well as in the page, so instructions sent from somewhere other than our app cannot widen what it will answer.

No system can be guaranteed secure. If we become aware of a breach involving student records, we will tell the schools affected.

12. What you may do with StarCode

You may use StarCode for learning and for teaching, at home, in a class, in a club or in a school. You may show it to people, write about it, and use the programs your students make however you like. Their programs are theirs.

Please do not sell access to StarCode, share a class or teacher code outside the class it was bought for, take the app apart to rebuild it as your own product, or try to get past the limits described above.

StarCode, the StarCode Tutor, the StarCode name and the StarCode logo belong to Star Kids Academy. Robot names such as LEGO, SPIKE, EV3, micro:bit, Arduino and Sphero belong to their own owners, who are not connected with StarCode and do not endorse it.

13. No warranty

StarCode is provided as it is. We work hard on it and we test it, but we cannot promise it will always be available, always be correct, or always work with every robot and every computer. To the fullest extent the law allows, Star Kids Robotics LLC is not liable for lost work, damaged hardware, or any indirect or consequential loss arising from using it. Nothing here takes away rights you have under the law where you live.

14. Changes

If we change something here that matters, we will change the date at the top and say what changed on the page. Carrying on using StarCode after that means the new version applies.

15. How to reach us

Star Kids Academy, Cupertino, California, United States.