Questions

Hiraia is a free AI science tutor for Filipino students. It runs on the phone itself — not in the cloud — and is built to reinforce what is being focused on at school, at home, without an internet connection.

The tutor speaks Tagalog and English (Bisaya is in the same build). After a one-time download it keeps working offline, with no account and no personal data leaving the device.

Yes. The Android app is on the homepage as “Download Hiraia for Android” (v0.4.26). It is an APK from hiraia.org, not the Play Store. You can also try the cards in the browser with “Try the demo” before you install.

The first time you open the app it fetches about 1.7GB — the model and related files. After that it runs offline. The project is still early alpha, so expect rough edges.

2026-09 — Tala v0.4.4 is the teacher companion — download it from the homepage, on a separate phone from Hiraia.

2026-09 — Android 10 and newer are now supported.

2026-09 — Android APK v0.4.26 is public — download it from the homepage, not the Play Store.

2026-09 — A class can copy the model over school or municipal Wi-Fi with Pears, once one phone has a complete copy.

Hiraia is a stack of flash cards, not a chat window. Each card carries one science fact and one illustration. After a few cards, a short quiz checks whether the fact stuck; a recap card then gathers what was just read. The homepage demo walks that same loop: pick Tagalog, English, or Bisaya and a grade from 3 through 10, then the first-quarter cards for that grade in curriculum order.

If a student asks for a topic that is not already in the deck, Hiraia can print a new card from its fact bank — in Tagalog, English, or Bisaya — instead of sending the question to the internet.

Only for the first fetch. The first time you open the app it downloads about 1.7GB — the customized AI model and related files — from Hiraia’s servers. Prefer Wi-Fi; that transfer is large.

After that the tutor runs fully offline. No account, and Hiraia’s servers do not receive student names or what was typed. If a student joins Tala with a class QR, that teacher phone can receive saved names and learning activity over Nearby — still not over the internet. Sharing a finished model copy across classroom Wi-Fi is coming soon; until then each phone still fetches the model itself.

No. There is no registration, no subscription, and no in-app purchase. Download it from the homepage, share it with classmates, and use it.

Students in Philippine elementary to junior high, roughly Grades 3 through 10, studying science. A parent or teacher can sit with the student, pick the grade, and let them walk the cards. The Hiraia app is the student’s tutor.

Teachers who want a classroom view install Tala, a separate app on the teacher’s phone. Hiraia is not a replacement for a teacher, and it is not affiliated with the Department of Education.

Yes. Onboarding asks for a language (Tagalog, English, or Bisaya) and a grade. Both can be changed later from inside the tutor. The grade weights which cards are drawn and how a generated card is pitched; it does not lock the student into a single year of material.

Copying the model from phone to phone over school or municipal Wi-Fi is coming soon (Pears). Until that ships, each phone still downloads the model itself. Use Wi-Fi for that first fetch.

Watching a class while they study is a different path: that is Tala, on the teacher’s phone. Students keep using Hiraia; they do not share one Hiraia install as a classroom dashboard.

Tala is Hiraia’s free teacher companion. Students keep studying in Hiraia. The teacher installs Tala on a separate Android phone, creates a class, and collects learning activity from nearby student phones — card views, quizzes, and the names saved on those phones.

It is not a replacement for a teacher, not a gradebook that uploads to DepEd, and not affiliated with the Department of Education. Records stay on the teacher phone unless the teacher exports or shares them.

From the homepage, “Download Tala v0.4.4 for Android.” It is a separate APK from Hiraia, also from hiraia.org, not the Play Store. The file is https://assets.hiraia.org/models/tala-v0p4p4.apk. Android will ask you to allow a sideloaded install; that is expected.

If Tala is already on the phone, update it without uninstalling so classes and records stay put.

On Tala, enter the teacher name for that class and tap Show QR Code. Wait until the screen says Nearby ready. On each student phone, open Hiraia, go to settings, and choose Join Hiraia Tala / Scan teacher QR.

One QR belongs to the whole class. Students do not pick a group. After phones have joined, the teacher assigns groups on Tala if needed. The QR does not change when groups are created or students are moved.

Tala can show a temporary 12-character code (XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) while that class is collecting. On Hiraia, choose Enter code instead and type it. The code works only while Tala is collecting that class and expires after one hour. Refresh QR Code on Tala rotates the backup code; the class QR itself stays the same.

Not for collecting a class. Transfers use Google Nearby Connections over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios in the same room. Keep both apps in the foreground, phones unlocked, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on. There is no pairing list and no remote collection over mobile data.

Internet is only for later extras: sending an issue report, or sharing an exported spreadsheet from the teacher phone. Collection itself does not upload student activity to Hiraia’s servers.

Both need Android 10 or newer. Tala also needs Google Play services. Install Tala on the teacher’s phone and Hiraia on each student’s phone.

Do not run both apps on one device for a class. Nearby cannot move activity between Hiraia and Tala on the same phone.

After a student joins, Tala can show saved profile names and learning activity from that phone: card views (every view, and unique cards), quizzes, and related events. A tile lights up while that phone is connected.

Hiraia’s online service still does not receive those names. Activity reaches Tala only after a QR or class code join, encrypted for that teacher phone. Share an export only with people you trust — the spreadsheet includes names and event details.

Yes. Share XLSX on Tala exports the active class: class details, each learner’s totals, and stored events. Tala builds the file on the phone and opens Android’s share sheet. It is a snapshot, not an automatic upload.

Issue reports (optional photos or a short video) stay on the phone until the teacher is online; Send pending reports retries them. Share report text is a text-only fallback.

Android 10 or newer. Phones with 4GB of memory or more are recommended for model-generated cards. The built-in flash-card library works without the model. Hiraia is built for entry-level Android handsets, not for a flagship-only audience.

There is no iPhone build, and it is not listed on the Play Store. Download the APK from the homepage on hiraia.org.

The Hiraia app itself is a few hundred megabytes. The first time you open it, it fetches about 1.7GB of files — the on-device model and related assets. Leave that much free space before the first launch, plus a little room for the system to unpack the files. Tala is a much smaller teacher APK and does not download that model.

Hiraia looks for the model and related files. If they are not on the phone yet, it downloads about 1.7GB from Hiraia’s own servers. The transfer can resume if the connection drops. Sharing a finished copy across classroom Wi-Fi is coming soon.

When that finishes, the tutor is local. You can turn on airplane mode and keep studying.

Prefer Wi-Fi. 1.7GB on a cellular plan is a large bill for most families. Classroom sharing of the model over school or municipal Wi-Fi is coming soon; until then, each student phone still fetches the model itself, so that first download should not ride a cellular plan.

Hiraia is distributed as its own APK, outside the Play Store, so a school or a household can copy it without a Google account. Android will ask you to allow installs from the browser or from Files; that prompt is expected.

Download it only from the button on hiraia.org. Do not install an APK that arrived as a random file or a third-party mirror.

Any device running Android 10 or newer with enough free storage can try. Memory is the usual limit: 4GB RAM is recommended for model-generated cards because the 2B on-device model has to sit in memory while it runs. The built-in flash-card library remains available without generating new cards.

If you are unsure, try the web demo first. It will not prove performance on your handset, but it will show you the cards and the quizzes.

Science. Hiraia is built around the Department of Education’s MATATAG science competencies for the 2027 curriculum, aimed at elementary through junior high. It is not a math tutor, not an English workbook, and not a general chatbot.

The flash cards and illustrations are pregenerated from science competencies published for DepEd’s MATATAG curriculum. The fact bank is indexed so a student’s question can be matched to those materials and printed as a new card.

Hiraia is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Department of Education. Alignment is based on public-domain curriculum information, has not been reviewed by DepEd, and is not guaranteed to be complete or up to date. Use it as a study aid, at your own risk.

On the order of 50,000 science facts, 30,000 illustrations, and 20,000 mini-quizzes. A typical card is one fact plus one drawing; quizzes interrupt the walk to check memory; recap cards gather what was just read.

Tagalog, English, and Bisaya (Cebuano), in one APK. The on-device model is a continued-pretraining fork of Qwen 3.5-2B, further trained on a Filipino and Bisaya corpus so those languages can run on the phone. Factual accuracy is ranked above perfect fluency if the two ever conflict.

Grades 3 through 10. The default pitch is Grade 5, because many students are behind the year printed on their ID. Changing the grade reweights which cards are drawn; it does not hide the rest of the bank.

A typed question first searches the local deck. A confident match opens that card. A miss is answered from the full fact bank on the device: Hiraia retrieves related facts (indexed with LaBSE sentence embeddings) and prints a new card in the current language — or it says, honestly, that the topic is outside what a science tutor covers.

It will not browse the web, and it will not invent a lesson that is not grounded in the bank.

No. Hiraia is a drill-and-explain tutor: one fact, one picture, a quiz, a recap. It is meant to reinforce a lesson, not to write a report or sit the exam. If a question is off-domain, it should refuse rather than improvise.

Early alpha. The public student app is Hiraia v0.4.26: cards, illustrations, quizzes, recaps, and the on-device Hiraia-2B tutor. Tala v0.4.4 is the companion teacher app. Expect rough edges, and treat answers as a study aid rather than an authority.

No Play Store listing. Use “Download Hiraia for Android” on the homepage. The file is https://assets.hiraia.org/models/hiraia-v0p4p26.apk. Android will warn because the app is sideloaded; that is expected. Play Protect may scan it.

Sideloaded APKs trigger a system warning. Open the prompt, allow installs from the browser or from Files for this one file, and install only an APK that came from https://hiraia.org. Play Protect may scan it; that is normal for an app that is not in the Play Store.

If the phone still refuses, confirm it is Android 10 or newer. Older system versions are not supported.

Stay on Wi-Fi. Check that the phone has more than 1.7GB free. Leave the app open until the fetch finishes — switching away can pause some downloads. Classroom sharing of the model from a nearby phone is coming soon; until then the fetch is from Hiraia’s servers.

The transfer is built to resume. Opening the app again should continue rather than start at zero. If it loops from the beginning, clear the incomplete files by force-stopping Hiraia and retrying on a more stable network.

The on-device model needs RAM. Close other apps, especially browsers and video. Phones with less than 4GB of memory will struggle with generated cards; that is a hardware limit, not a setting you can flip. The built-in library still works. Lowering screen brightness and keeping the phone out of direct sun helps on long sessions.

If the app is killed as soon as a card is asked, the model likely never finished downloading. Confirm the first-run fetch completed.

Offline use starts after the first-run download has finished. If the model or the illustrations never arrived, the tutor has nothing local to open. Reconnect to Wi-Fi, launch Hiraia, and wait for that fetch to complete once. After that, airplane mode is fine.

Change the language from the control inside the feed — it is the same three options as onboarding (Tagalog, English, Bisaya). A change should rewrite the current card and the ones after it. If a single card stays in English, that item may only have been authored in one language; skip it and keep walking.

Change the grade. The default is Grade 5 on purpose, because many students are behind their school year. A lower grade draws more elementary cards; a higher grade weights junior-high material more heavily. The bank still contains the rest of the years — the grade is a weight, not a wall.

Hiraia only answers from its science fact bank. Questions about celebrities, homework in other subjects, or medical advice should be refused. If the topic is science but still misses, try a shorter query (the idea, not a full exam item) and check the language setting.

A miss is not a crash. The honest “I am only a science tutor” card is the product working as designed.

The demo loads a large card set in the browser, then talks to Hiraia’s servers only when a typed question misses the local deck. On a slow connection, wait through the first load — later cards are local. If the loader never finishes, reload the page. The demo still needs the internet; the Android app is the offline tutor.

Write down the phone model, Android version, and whether the first-run download finished. The project is early alpha; rough edges are expected. Luis Buenaventura, who built Hiraia, is at x.com/helloluis. Use the feedback form on the homepage. An on-page assistant for this FAQ is next.

Keep Tala on Collect activity or the class QR screen until it says Nearby ready. Keep Hiraia open on each student phone. Both phones unlocked, in the same room, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios on — they do not need internet. Use two devices; one phone running both apps will not transfer.

Allow Nearby, Bluetooth, location, and camera when Android asks. Play services must be installed for Tala. If a camera cannot read the QR, use the 12-character code while Tala is still collecting.