I built this for my own family first.

The story behind Family Scavenger Hunt — and why I think it actually works.

My name is Bobby Lough. I’m a parent of teenagers in the Boston area, and for years before I built any of this, I was doing a cruder version of it in Apple Notes.

The night before a museum trip or a historic site visit, I’d type out a list of things to find, questions to answer, and small challenges to complete. Nothing fancy — just enough to give the kids a mission.

We’d show up to the USS Constitution or the Museum of Science and instead of hearing “can we go yet?” forty-five minutes in, they were actually looking at things. Arguing about the answers. Racing each other to the next clue.

It worked better than I expected, every time. The exhibits that might have been a blur — the Revolutionary War display, the natural history hall of dinosaur bones, the art wing where nothing is touchable — suddenly had a reason to pay attention.

The problem was the prep. I was rebuilding it from scratch before every outing, cobbling together clues in Notes at 10pm the night before, never saving anything, never making it feel like a real experience. It was a hack that worked, but it didn’t scale past my own kitchen table.

So I built the real version. Family Scavenger Hunt generates a personalized, story-driven hunt for your exact destination and your actual kids — with their name in it, tailored to where you’re going, ready in 30 seconds instead of 45 minutes.

The core idea is still the same one I figured out in Apple Notes: give kids a mission, and they’ll notice everything. The AI just means you don’t have to be the one who builds it every time.

I’m building this in public and writing about what works at sabiventures.com.