Features
What you’re buying, capability by capability
Obsly turns a practitioner’s rough notes into a written EYFS observation with the Development Matters links already made. Here is everything it does — and, at the end, everything it deliberately doesn’t.
What it does
The capabilities
Capturing notes
One field, the child's first name fixed at the start. Typed or dictated with the practitioner's own device keyboard. Optional one-tap context — activity, resources, indoor or outdoor, group size, a learning focus — for when she wants to steer the result.
Built from several notes
She selects as many notes as she likes from across a session, and gets one richer observation from all of them. The joining-up across a morning is the slow part of the job, and it is the part the tool does.
What comes back
Six outputs: the observation prose, framework links, Characteristics of Effective Learning, suggested next steps, a parent-friendly summary, and keywords and tags. Built in a few seconds, all editable.
Links you can check
Every framework link uses Development Matters' exact published wording, with the phrase from the practitioner's own note that justifies it. Strong matches are applied; weaker ones are suggestions she accepts before they count.
Other children are never named
Automatic, and in two layers. Peers become "another child" and "a peer", and the finished observation is checked against the setting's roll before it is shown — so even two children sharing a first name is handled, not a blocker.
The review gate
Your practitioner sees exactly what is about to be sent, and can change or remove anything, before anything leaves. Nothing is processed automatically. It is the product's whole answer to sending as little as possible.
Sign-off, and whose it is
Approving an observation records who stood behind it and when. There is no countersigning, no second signature and no approval queue — permanently. Where a setting wants a junior's writing checked, that conversation happens the way it always has.
Getting it out
Four copy formats — full observation with links, observation only, parent summary only, or next steps only — pasted into whatever the setting already uses. The evidence quotes appear in none of them, on purpose: pasted into another child's file, a quote would carry a peer's name into the wrong record. It stops at the clipboard.
Safeguarding, handled properly
A note suggesting injury, distress, a disclosure or harm is saved but not turned into a learning observation; the practitioner is pointed to the setting's procedure and designated lead. A manager can add attributed notes, and they sit in a confidential section of the child's PDF. The tool stops rather than processes — it does not diagnose.
The child's record
Notes and observations per child, and a per-child PDF export a manager can produce for a transition, a parent, or a request. There is no setting-wide export — the record travels one child at a time, which is the appropriate unit for a child's information.
Your staff
Two roles — manager and practitioner — with one login each. A shared password would make sign-off meaningless, so every practitioner has her own. Two roles is the whole of it; there is no supervisor tier to configure.
The limits
What it deliberately won't do
It won’t write from nothing, it stops on safeguarding rather than processing it, it doesn’t assess or judge your children, and it never invents an action, a word or a number that wasn’t in the note. These are deliberate boundaries, not gaps — and for a manager, they are most of what makes the tool one you can approve.
The value
What this is worth to a setting
Time
Roughly 60 to 90 seconds of practitioner time per observation, spread across a day, mostly while the moment is fresh.
Consistency
Your most experienced practitioner already writes well; your newest apprentice writes thin. Every observation leaving the setting reads professionally, whoever was on shift.
Retention
Paperwork load is a known reason experienced practitioners leave, and replacing one costs thousands in recruitment and induction.
Defensibility
Every framework link quotes the practitioner's own words, and sign-off records who stood behind it and when.
No migration risk
Nothing to move, nothing to transfer, nothing to undo. You paste into what you already use.
A sanctioned alternative
Staff are already using consumer chatbots. This is the version you can approve, under a contract you hold.
Start free
No card, no trial countdown, no call with anyone. Free for one practitioner and up to 5 children.
Manager, and not ready to commit? Don’t. Try it in one room for a month and see whether anyone asks to keep it.