Climb Decathlon
Academic Decathlon · iOS
Adaptive practice for AcaDec teams. Built for coaches.
Launching August 2026 for the 2026–27 prep cycle.
A KyrosWorks product
For coaches
The state of AcaDec prep tooling
Every coach we have spoken with has described the same four problems. The existing tools are content libraries, not learning systems — and the work of converting one into the other lands on the coach.
- No existing tool offers adaptive difficulty per student. DemiDec, the USAD Online Testing & Training Center, Quizlet — all static. Every student sees the same questions in the same order.
- Coaches spend 150–300 hours per year hand-building practice materials, by every coach we have asked. Slide decks, question sets, mock tests — all manual.
- Annual theme rotation makes flashcard libraries obsolete every June. The work resets. The Quizlet set built for last year's theme is dead on July 1.
- No mobile-first AcaDec study tool exists. Students study from DemiDec PDFs on whatever device renders them, which is usually a laptop they do not bring to lunch, the bus, or the kitchen counter.
The application
What Climb Decathlon is
A per-student iOS application paired with a coach dashboard. The adaptive engine, AI tutor, and mastery model are the same ones shipping today on Climb Test Prep — retrained on AcaDec material and structured around the ten events.
Per-student iOS app
Each Decathlete on their own device
Every student has their own mastery model — Beta-posterior confidence per topic, per event. The app surfaces what that specific student is about to forget, not what the team average is about to forget. Sessions sync to the coach dashboard so the coach sees real signal without asking.
Wren — the AI tutor
Memory across sessions, three teaching modes
Wren reads each student's recent attempts and per-topic mastery before saying anything. Three modes: Explain (default), Diagnose ("walk me through how you got there" — only when warranted), and Reassure & Reset (when a student is in a wrong-answer streak, she pauses teaching and acknowledges the struggle rather than piling on). Same Wren as Climb Test Prep, retrained on AcaDec material.
Adaptive engine
The forgetting curve, made operational
Beta-posterior mastery tracks what each student knows. Leitner spaced-repetition surfaces cards they are about to forget. Bootstrap propagation transfers learning across difficulty levels — a correct answer at the Hard tier also raises confidence at the Medium tier. Built and shipping on Climb Test Prep today.
Ten peaks
One mountain per AcaDec event
Math, Economics, Science, Literature, Art, Music, Social Science, Essay, Speech, Interview. Each event is its own progression. A student's altitude on each mountain reflects their mastery in that subject. The coach sees ten altitudes per student.
Coach dashboard
Top-2-per-division strategic view
USAD scoring rewards the top two scorers per division (Honors, Scholastic, Varsity) per event. The dashboard shows that picture directly: which student in each division is climbing fastest in each event, where the team's medal capacity actually lives, and which subjects are under-staffed two weeks before regionals.
vs. existing tools
What's different
There are good content libraries in this space. Climb Decathlon is not trying to replace them on content depth. It is doing four things they do not do.
The only AcaDec tool with adaptive difficulty per student
DemiDec, USAD OTTC, Quizlet — every student sees the same questions. Climb Decathlon adapts difficulty and topic mix to each student's current mastery state.
The only AcaDec tool with an AI tutor
Wren reads each student's mastery and recent attempts before explaining anything. She anchors explanations in past successes — not generic essay-writing advice and not a hint button that reveals the answer.
Item banks regenerate from the new annual theme in days, not months
When USAD announces the next year's theme in June, the themed-subject item banks regenerate against the new resource guides on a timeline measured in days. Coaches do not rebuild their Quizlet decks from scratch.
Built on a shipping engine
Climb Test Prep is on TestFlight. Open Road Ace is in App Review. The mastery model, the tutor architecture, the adaptive sampler — all in production. Climb Decathlon is the second product on the engine, not the first attempt.
Roadmap
Timeline
Theme-independent subjects first, themed subjects second, performance events last. The order matches what can be built honestly against what is known today versus what waits on the 2026–27 resource guides.
August 2026 — MVP
Math and Economics ship first
Both are theme-independent — the question structure does not change with the annual theme. Coach dashboard live. Adaptive engine live. Wren live. Two events is enough to validate the loop with a real team in real practice through fall regionals.
September–November 2026
Themed subjects roll out
Science, Literature, Art, Music, Social Science — all aligned to the 2026–27 USAD theme "Journeys of Transformation: Travel and Transportation." Each event ships when its item bank is ready, not on a fixed marketing date.
January 2027
Essay, Speech, and Super Quiz
Essay coaching mode for Wren — written-response feedback grounded in USAD essay rubrics. Speech preparation mode. Super Quiz live-game format. Timed to land before the state competition window.
For the first coach
The pilot offer
Climb Decathlon needs one team in the field to harden against. In exchange, that team's coach gets the product free through the entire 2026–27 prep cycle.
Free for your team — coach plus up to nine competitors — through the 2026–27 prep cycle. From August 2026 through state finals. In exchange, four things:
- Honest feedback. A short note every week or two on what is working and what is not.
- A public testimonial at the end of the season, if and only if the product actually helped.
- Introductions to two other AcaDec coaches you respect.
- Permission to cite your team's anonymized engagement and mastery data in product development. Names stay private. Aggregate signal informs the next year's build.
Post-pilot
Pricing
After the 2026–27 pilot cycle, Climb Decathlon is priced for one team — the coach plus the nine competitors USAD scoring is built around.
$299
per team per year
One coach plus up to nine competitors. About $33 per student per year. One bill, one invoice line, no per-seat add-ons.
From KyrosWorks
Who is building this
KyrosWorks is a one-person operation building AI-native software for problems people reliably forget to solve, sustain, or get right by hand. Climb Decathlon is the second product on the Climb engine. Climb Test Prep — an adaptive iOS app for the SAT® exam — is the first; it is on TestFlight today. Open Road Ace, a millisecond-accurate pacing application for open-road time-trial racing, is in App Review.
Each KyrosWorks product begins with a problem the founder personally encounters or is asked to solve, is validated with users who share that problem, and ships when it works under the conditions where it actually fails. The Decathlon build is starting from a coach's problem, not a founder's.
Pilot a team
Climb Decathlon launches August 2026. One coach's team comes into the 2026–27 pilot. If your team is competing this season and the trade above sounds fair, send a note about your program — division mix, returning competitors, current prep stack — and we will talk.
will.hays@gmail.comAs of May 2026, the Decathlon build is in design. The underlying engine — adaptive sampler, Wren tutor, mastery model — ships now on Climb Test Prep. Nothing on this page is vaporware; the order of operations is.