Le Guide Kritik Toy Workshop · house edition

Monsieur Kritik

A puffed-up printed critic with a monocle and moving eyebrows. He reviews sand dinners, play-dough cakes and kids’ drawings with a perfectly straight face.

Ages 6–123D print + electronics + AI~1,400–2,200 CZK (about €55–90)

A child puts a creation on the turntable and rings the bell. A camera that can only see the plate takes a photo, and the critic delivers a pompous review with a short story and one moral. Code hands out the stars by fixed rules and a servo pushes out a token. Then the child can defend the dish. Every week the critic craves something different, and he remembers what he has already tasted.

Amuse-bouche N° 01

Play a round

Pick who is playing and what goes on the plate, then ring the bell. Every review here is pre-written. On the real toy Claude writes them, and the code makes the same checks you see on the ticket.

Sand cake with a pebble cherry is on the plate. Ring the bell.

Who’s playing
Week 1 · day 1 · he craves
something green
On the plate
Stars today: Son (9) 0 of 3Daughter (6) 0 of 3

La critique

No review yet

★★

Monsieur is waiting with his napkin on and both eyebrows down.

M. Kritik

Monsieur’s notebook

  1. Empty. Nothing tasted yet.
Entrée N° 02

The wow moment

My 6-year-old daughter rolls a long green snake out of play-dough, puts it on the plate and rings the bell hard enough to be heard in the kitchen. The plate turns once. One eyebrow goes up, slowly, and stays there. Then the speaker: “Escargot! At last, someone in this house understands French cuisine.”

She holds the button and shouts that it’s a snake. The critic takes a breath and rewrites the whole review around the bravest dish he has ever been served. The token was out before the argument started.

A sample round

Bell
My 9-year-old son puts a sand cake with a pebble on top on the plate. Ding.
Monsieur
“A cake of sand. Mon Dieu. The crust is bold, the crumb is mostly beach, and the cherry is a pebble that refuses to be eaten. My great-uncle Gaston, a baker in Lyon, once dropped his best cake on the beach. He served it anyway and called it Gâteau de Plage. People queued for a week, mostly to complain. Moral: a cherry on top forgives a lot, even when the cherry is a stone.”
Code
label “dessert” is on the list → ★ · craving “something round”: yes → ★ · 2 of 3 today · 2 tokens out
Son (9)
“It’s a beach cake. Nobody eats beach cakes. You just look at them.”
Monsieur
“A cake for looking at. Then I have been tasting it wrong the whole time. I cross out ‘mostly beach’ and write ‘coastal’.”
Code
stars unchanged: 2

How a round goes

  1. A parent switches on parent mode in Home Assistant and stays nearby.
  2. The child puts a play-dough or sand dish on the turntable, or lays a drawing on it, and rings the bell.
  3. The plate turns. The camera, which can only reach the plate, takes a photo, and the critic raises an eyebrow.
  4. The critic gives a review and a short story about the creation with one moral. He remembers what he has seen before and judges whether the dish meets this week’s craving, for example “something green”.
  5. From the answer, the code accepts only a label from the list. It gives one star for the creation and a second one for the craving, three a day at most. A servo then pushes out a token.
  6. The child can defend the dish on the talk button, and the critic reconsiders the review. The stars stay as they are.
Plat du jour N° 03

Why a tenth time

The craving changesEvery week he wants something else. “Something green” sends the kids to the play-dough box, “something round” sends them to the sandpit with a yogurt cup.
He remembersA snail that comes back a week later gets compared with the first one. A bigger shell gets noticed and mentioned.
Three stars a dayThe cap keeps a token worth something. A fourth dish in the afternoon still gets a full review, just without a star.
The defenseThe stars are settled before anyone argues, so the argument is only about pride.
Drawings countA child who doesn’t want sand under their nails can bring a drawing and still get the full treatment.

What AI adds ★

Without a model this is a turntable that plays a fanfare. Claude looks at a green lump and decides it is a snail, then gives the snail a journey from Burgundy and a moral about tidying your room.

It also checks the dish against this week’s craving, picks a label from a fixed list and reads the notebook of past dishes that comes with every photo. When a child defends the dish, it gets the transcript and changes its mind in character. It cannot touch the stars. It never hears a voice either, because whisper.cpp turns speech into text on the Gateway first.

En cuisine N° 04

How it’s built

Printed parts

  • The critic: head, bust in a jacket, eyebrows and a monocle. Eyebrows and monocle sit on two micro servos. The MMU3 can print him in white, black, gold and red in one go.
  • The turntable plate and its base, with the stepper motor inside.
  • A camera arm with hard stops, so the ESP32-CAM can only point at the plate.
  • A token magazine for 50 mm tokens.

Electronics

  • ESP32-CAM on the arm.
  • Two micro servos in the critic and a servo that pushes out a token.
  • Stepper motor under the plate.
  • A bell that starts the round, a talk button with a microphone and a speaker.
  • The Mac at home as the Gateway, running whisper.cpp, Piper and the calls to Claude.

Parts list

L’addition
PartQtyCounted as
Printed, PLA or PETG
Critic figure: head, bust, eyebrows, monocle1filament
Turntable plate and base1filament
Camera arm with hard stops1filament
Token magazine, 50 mm tokens1filament
Electronics
ESP32-CAM1electronics
Micro servo for eyebrows and monocle2electronics
Servo for the token magazine1electronics
Stepper motor for the plate1electronics
Bell1electronics
Button with microphone1electronics
Speaker1electronics
Already at home
Mac as the Gateway: whisper.cpp, Piper10 CZK
Home Assistant10 CZK
Running cost
Claude APIper reviewsmall fees
Total estimate1,400–2,200 CZK (about €55–90)

I have one estimate for the whole build. Most of it is electronics: the camera, servos, stepper motor and sound. Filament and small Claude API fees per review come on top.

Architecture

Our house: voice and audio stay inside this line The toy ESP32-CAM on the armbell, talk button + mic2 servos in the criticservo for tokensstepper under the platespeaker Gateway (Mac) game code: stars, daily cap,craving, notebookwhisper.cpp: speech → textPiper: text → voicechecks every model answer Home Assistant parent mode on / off photo, audio voice, motors Claude API in: photo of the plate,craving, notebook, textout: label, yes / no,review with a story photo+ text JSON

Where code ends and the model begins

Code does

  • Starts a round only in parent mode.
  • Turns the plate, takes one photo, moves the eyebrows.
  • Picks the weekly craving and keeps the notebook.
  • Accepts only a label from the list and a yes or no.
  • Gives a star for the dish and one for the craving, three a day at most.
  • Drives the token servo and the offline fallback.

The model does

  • Looks at the photo and says what the dish is.
  • Picks a label from the list and judges the craving.
  • Writes the review, the story and the moral.
  • Compares the dish with the notebook.
  • Rewrites the review after the child’s defense.
Hygiène N° 05

Safety and offline

Certificat d’hygiène

  1. A child’s voice never leaves the house. The talk button records into whisper.cpp on the Gateway, and Piper speaks the review there too. Claude gets text and one photo of the plate.
  2. The microphone listens only while the button is held. The bell starts the photo and the review and nothing else.
  3. Stars, the daily cap of three, the craving and the notebook live in code. From the model’s answer the code accepts only a label from the list and a yes or no. Only then does the servo push out a token.
  4. The camera sits on an arm with hard stops and points only at the plate. A child would have to lean right over the plate to end up in a photo.
  5. Tokens are 50 mm across, too big to swallow. There are no coin cells and no magnets in the toy.
  6. A parent switches on parent mode in Home Assistant and stays nearby. Claude runs on the parent’s account; Anthropic allows products for minors when they have safeguards.

Offline: without internet the plate still turns, a fanfare plays and the code gives one star for the dish. The review comes back with the internet.

Le dessert N° 06

Roadmap

Le bistrot · a weekend

First playable prototype

  • The turntable on its stepper motor, the ESP32-CAM, the bell and the speaker.
  • A printed head stands in for the critic, without servos.
  • The code counts the stars and a parent hands out the tokens.
  • No defense and no notebook yet.
  • The review with its story already runs through Claude and Piper.

Le grand restaurant

Full version

  • The whole figure with eyebrows and monocle on two micro servos.
  • The token magazine with its own servo.
  • Defending the dish on the talk button.
  • The notebook of everything he has tasted, and a new craving every week.
  • Parent mode in Home Assistant and the offline fallback.
Mignardises N° 07

More ideas to try

A secret cravingThe code secretly draws the week’s craving from a short list of things the camera recognizes reliably: color, shape, material, number of parts. The reviews only drop hints, and the kids bring dishes to test their guesses. Whoever says the craving into the talk button gets a gold token, and the critic draws a new one.
Chef levelsEach child gets a cook level with cravings to match: something green at level one, something in three layers that tells a story about the sea at level three. Three cravings met move a child up a level, and the critic announces it. A small printed restaurant sign above the plate shows the level, and the child swaps it at each promotion.
An easel for drawingsA printed easel next to the plate holds a drawing upright, and the camera arm gets a second stop that points at it. Drawings then stand up for their review.

Status: an idea. Nothing on this page has been built or tested yet, and the demo is a simulation with pre-written answers. Prices are estimates from Czech shops in October 2026.