MythicalHelper is an open-source nonprofit website centered on a printable, verifiable certificate for parents who want to preserve childhood wonder with care.
The core idea is simple: when a child grows old enough to hear that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or other childhood legends were "just made up," they can discover a certificate and verification page showing that their parents were acting as trusted helpers on behalf of that larger world.
MythicalHelper exists to give visible form to a kind of care that usually stays hidden.
Many parents spend years carrying out gifts, traditions, and small works of wonder by hand. This project treats that effort not as a throwaway trick, but as a real act of stewardship. Its goal is to help families keep that effort legible, so that when the right moment comes, a child can understand that wonder was not erased by human hands. It was carried forward through them.
The project is organized around four pages:
- a public homepage
- an access page
- a certificate page with PDF export
- a public verification page
MythicalHelper/
├── access/ # Access flow
├── certificate/ # Certificate page
├── verify/ # Public verification page
├── worker/ # Cloudflare Worker + D1 backend
├── styles/ # Shared site styles
├── index.html # Homepage
├── package.json # Local dev scripts
└── logo.png # Project logo
- index.html: homepage
- access/index.html: access flow for creating or retrieving a record
- certificate/index.html: certificate view with QR generation and PDF export
- verify/index.html: public verification page
- worker/src/index.js: Cloudflare Worker API
- worker/migrations/0001_init.sql: D1 schema
The active flow has a lightweight backend shape:
- the access page can create, retrieve, edit, and delete a record through
/api - the certificate page can read a record through an access token or session
- the verification page can read a public record through a verify token
- the certificate page exports the result as a browser-side PDF
Current auth behavior:
Sign Upcreates a record and establishes a sessionSign Insends a magic link- opening that magic link restores an editable session
Accessautomatically becomes edit mode while a session is active
Install dependencies:
npm installRun the frontend:
npm run dev:staticRun the Worker locally in a second terminal:
npm run dev:workerApply the local D1 schema before testing the API:
npm run db:migrate:localDuring local development:
- the static frontend runs on
http://localhost:8000 - the Worker API runs on
http://localhost:8787 - the frontend will automatically use
http://localhost:8787/apiwhen opened from a local static server
The project is deployed as:
- Cloudflare Pages for the website
- Cloudflare Workers + D1 for the API
- Zoho for outbound magic-link email
Production domains:
https://mythicalhelper.orghttps://www.mythicalhelper.orghttps://api.mythicalhelper.org
Before deploying the Worker:
- configure worker/wrangler.jsonc
- create and bind the production D1 database
- apply worker/migrations/0001_init.sql
To enable Zoho sending in the Worker, configure:
EMAIL_MODE=zohoAPP_ORIGINZOHO_EMAILZOHO_CLIENT_IDZOHO_CLIENT_SECRETZOHO_REFRESH_TOKEN- optional:
ZOHO_ACCOUNT_ID
The most useful contributions right now are:
- copy and narrative refinements that feel warmer, clearer, and more believable
- mobile layout and accessibility improvements
- authentication, session, and magic-link polish
- Zoho and email delivery reliability improvements
- multilingual support
- new realm ideas that still fit mainstream childhood folklore and family ritual
If you want to contribute, start small and stay close to the current certificate-first product shape.
MIT License.