🔥 Points, the shop, and Hype Houses

teachChat's game layer runs on one simple promise: participating earns points, and spending them is always safe. This page covers how points work, what the shop sells, the two scoreboards, and Hype Houses, the class team meter.

How students earn points

Everything flows into one ledger, read two ways:

• Wallet: spendable points for the shop.
• Participation score: earnings minus penalties. This is the number you grade from, and spending never touches it.

Ways to earn:

• Chatting: 1 point per message, capped at 5 point-earning messages per minute so spam farming doesn't pay.
• Stickies cards: 1 point per card, under the same 5-per-minute cap as chat. Chat and cards share that one budget, so mixing them never earns more than chatting alone.
• Approved shared notes: 3 points base, rising by 1 for every 3 quiet minutes since the last student note, capped at 8. A note pays more when the class doc has sat quiet, so note-taking stays steady through the period. Each student can earn note points for up to 3 approved notes per session; after that, their approved notes still go into the class notes, they just don't pay. A note that's already in this session's notes (or already up for a vote) can't be proposed again, and after a proposal is approved or rejected, that student waits a minute before proposing another.
• Polls: everyone on a correct answer gets paid. Whoever said it first gets 5 points, each agreer after gets one less, with a floor of 1. Being early and right is worth the most, but backing a right answer always pays something. More in Polls, notes, and vibe checks.
• Voting on classmates' notes: half a point of participation credit. It counts toward the score, never the wallet: credit for engaging, not shop money.

Timeouts deduct a few points (up to 5), and those penalties do count against the score and the leaderboard. A student who is already in a timeout can't be timed out again until it ends, so a double click never doubles the penalty.

The shop: spending is always safe

Students spend wallet points on:

• Stickers: the class starts with a starter catalog. In Setup, under Points and rewards, press Edit stickers to add your own custom stickers, price them, or remove them, and use Send cooldown to set the wait between sends (10 seconds by default). Removing a custom sticker refunds every owner exactly what they paid for it, even if you changed the price since. Open the shop turns stickers on or off for the class, and so does Stickers in the More menu on the Live tab.
• Name colors: 10 free starters, plus unlockable colors at a flat 25 points each.
• Name icons: 16 free starters, with unlock tiers at 10, 20, 35, 50, and 75 points. The 75-point icons are the semester-long grind flex.
• Message spotlight: 3 points to highlight their own message in the chat.
• Buddies and their wardrobe: new companions, hats, weather, yard life, and skies for the pet window. The full roster, prices, and every life stage live in the buddy compendium.

Buying never lowers a participation score or a leaderboard rank. Spending only moves the wallet. Students see this same promise in their own stats panel, so nobody hoards points out of grade anxiety.

Two scoreboards

Session leaderboard: the top 10 by points earned this session only, screennames only. It appears on the projector overlay and behind the 🏆 button in the student view. On your own Live tab, the Students list shows Points today for everyone while a session runs, online students first. When Hype Houses is on, each row also shows the student's house emoji.

Overall participation score: the cumulative number, earned minus penalties. You see it per student as Engagement in their panel (click a name in the Students list), next to Today and Wallet, and between sessions the list itself shows it as Points. Each student sees their own in their stats panel, alongside what they've earned this session and what's in their wallet.

Hype Houses

Four teams per class: Ember 🔥, Tide 🌊, Grove 🌿, and Volt ⚡ by default. Teams reshuffle every session and house points reset with them, so every class is a fresh competition. House points are a team tally only: they never touch anyone's personal score or wallet.

New classes start with Hype Houses off. Turn it on with Use Hype Houses in Setup, under Points and rewards, or flip Hype Houses in the More menu on the Live tab.

How the meter charges. The meter fills only when two things happen inside a rolling 90-second window: enough different students participate, and the class earns enough points. Both thresholds scale with how many students are online, and the bar shows whichever condition is lagging. The leading house's emoji rides the tip of the fill; a sprout 🌱 rides while nobody leads.

Levels that pay off. Meeting the launch condition starts Level 1: a points goal against a countdown, harder and shorter every level, up to Level 5. Completing level N banks N house points for the house that led it. Miss a countdown and the run ends, but completed levels keep their loot. Then the meter recharges for 10 minutes before it can gather again.

The warm-up delay. First house can start after (in Setup, under Points and rewards) sets how long after Start session the first house can begin building: No delay, a preset delay between 1 and 20 minutes, or When I say so. It applies from the next session start, and it keeps houses a mid-lesson payoff instead of minute-one noise. During a session, the Hype Houses card under Now running on the Live tab does the rest: Start now skips the wait, and Stop ends a build and holds the meter.

Theme the teams. Under Points and rewards in Setup, Team names lets you rename the four houses and swap their emojis to fit your subject or unit: Sparta, Rome, Athens, and Carthage for a history class. Press Rename teams, make your changes, then press Save teams; Reset defaults brings back Ember, Tide, Grove, and Volt. Names can be up to 24 characters, team colors stay fixed so the chips stay recognizable, and points and membership carry over. It's just a re-skin.

Match the warm-up delay to your lesson shape: a 10 or 15 minute delay lands the first build right as independent work begins, and "when I say so" saves it for exactly the moment you want the room to light up.