The problem we were solving
The original motivation was personal. Trying to reach real grammar accuracy in French as an adult, with limited study time, and finding that nothing available actually did the job. Vocabulary apps gamified repetition but never taught structure. Grammar books explained rules well but offered no way to practise them. What was missing was something in the middle — systematic enough to cover the real grammar, interactive enough to build reflexes instead of just knowledge. Petit Béret started as that missing tool, built for ourselves before it became an app.
Why typing, not multiple choice
The first version of the conjugation drill had multiple-choice answers. It felt wrong immediately. Multiple choice lets you eliminate options, guess between two survivors, and get credit for recognition rather than production. In real French — speaking, writing, texting — nobody gives you four options. You have to produce the form from nothing. Switching to free-text typing made the app harder and more frustrating in the short term. It also made it significantly more effective. That friction before a correct answer is where the learning actually happens. We kept it.
Recognition and production are different skills. Multiple choice trains one; typing trains the other. French requires production.
Why structured modules instead of streaks
Streak mechanics reward consistency. That's their one virtue. They don't reward accuracy, depth of practice, or actual improvement. Someone can maintain a 300-day streak while making the exact same grammar mistakes they made on day one. We decided early that Petit Béret would track accuracy, not activity. The Mistakes Cabinet and Daily Precision Drill exist because of that decision — they surface what you actually got wrong, not just whether you opened the app. One session that fixes five persistent errors is worth more than ten sessions that confirm what you already know.
Why offline-first
Practically: people study on commutes, on planes, in places without signal. An app that needs a network connection fails exactly when you want to use it. But there's a deeper reason. An app that works fully offline has no reason to send your practice data to a server. The privacy-first design is a direct consequence of the offline-first architecture — not a feature we bolted on afterwards. We don't know which verbs you struggle with. We don't see your session history. That data lives on your device and nowhere else.
- Full functionality with no network connection, ever.
- No account required — works from the first launch.
- No practice data collected or transmitted.
- Cross-device sync is opt-in and device-to-device only.
How the six modules were chosen
The modules weren't designed from a curriculum. They were assembled from a list of recurring errors — things that kept going wrong after a year of deliberate French study. Six categories came up again and again: verb tense production, the Indicatif vs. Subjonctif decision, pronoun placement, preposition choice, noun gender, and accent orthography. Each module was built to isolate one of those failure modes and drill it directly. Vocabulary was excluded on purpose. There are already good vocabulary tools, and vocabulary isn't where intermediate learners are actually stuck.
The CEFR alignment
CEFR alignment came later, when it became obvious that different modules have different entry requirements. Present-tense conjugation is A1 work; the Subjonctif is B1–B2. Mapping difficulty settings to CEFR stages makes it possible to tell someone exactly where to start and what to tackle next. It also shaped the content — the conjugation module, for example, orders verbs by frequency so that A1–A2 learners never encounter low-frequency forms before the high-frequency ones are stable.
What comes next
The roadmap follows the same recurring-errors list. Prepositions (à, de, chez and their verb combinations) is the next module reaching full functionality. After that: listening comprehension integrated into the Daily Precision Drill, and expanding the Subjonctif module to cover the Subjonctif Passé. The core design decisions — typing, structured modules, offline, privacy-first — aren't changing.
If something feels wrong or missing, write to support@petitberet.app. Most of the improvements so far came from that inbox.
Try the result.
Download Petit Béret and see how the design decisions hold up in practice.
