---
title: Tonight's Tale
emoji: 🌙
colorFrom: indigo
colorTo: pink
sdk: gradio
sdk_version: "5.49.1"
app_file: app.py
pinned: false
license: apache-2.0
models:
  - Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B
  - Tongyi-MAI/Z-Image-Turbo
  - hexgrad/Kokoro-82M
tags:
  - build-small-hackathon
short_description: Turn your child's day into an illustrated bedtime story
---

# 🌙 Tonight's Tale — Build Small Hackathon (Backyard AI track)

**The real problem (mine, every single night):** my kid had a rough moment today — wouldn't share
toys, quarreled with a friend. Lecturing a 4-year-old at bedtime doesn't work. But a story about a
little rabbit facing *the same* dilemma? That works.

**What it does:** describe what happened in your child's day. The app weaves it into an illustrated,
narrated fairy tale starring your child's favorite recurring characters — with **choice points the
child decides**. A "wrong" turn leads to a *gentle, recoverable* setback ending; then you rewind
together: *"what if we'd chosen differently?"* — and replay the other branch to a warm ending.
The moral is shown **only to the parent**; the story itself never preaches.

## Small models, big adventure (≈10B total, ≤ 32B ✓)

| Job | Model | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Story writing (zh/en/de/fr, branching, JSON) | [Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B](https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B) | 4B |
| Watercolor illustrations | [Tongyi-MAI/Z-Image-Turbo](https://huggingface.co/Tongyi-MAI/Z-Image-Turbo) | 6B |
| Bedtime narration | [hexgrad/Kokoro-82M](https://huggingface.co/hexgrad/Kokoro-82M) | 0.08B |

Living with small-model limitations is the engineering core here, hardened on a 4GB-VRAM laptop
before this Space existed: schema-in-prompt JSON generation with balanced-brace extraction,
tolerant output normalization, business-invariant validation with corrective retries, and
"soft issues" that retry once then accept. Character visual consistency uses fixed English
appearance descriptions + one seed per story — no adapters needed.

## Try it (10 seconds)

The cast is pre-filled. Just type what happened today — e.g.
*"Didn't want to share toys at kindergarten and quarreled with a best friend"* — and press
**Weave tonight's story**. Make a choice when the story pauses. If you land on the rainy ending,
go back and try the other path. 🌧️→🌙

Run locally without any GPU: `STORY_MOCK=1 python app.py` (mock story/images/audio, full UI flow).