At Youth Coaching Institute, we have spent 13 years working at the intersection of behavioral science and human potential. We know that coaching is fundamentally about building the skills young people carry with them long after a session ends. The goal has never been a young person who needs their coach. It has always been a young person who knows how to think through difficult moments, advocate for themselves, and act with confidence. Claros was built to support exactly that. When something happens in the moment, and a coach is not immediately reachable, Claros offers a quick, structured thinking partner that helps young people apply the skills they are already building, rather than waiting, spiraling, or white-knuckling it until their next appointment.
The Claros youth experience is built around solution-focused, non-directive coaching conversations. Claros never gives advice. Instead, it asks the kinds of questions a skilled coach asks; those that help young people hear themselves more clearly, identify what they already know, and take a meaningful next step.
Every conversation is grounded in the International Coaching Federation’s core competencies and YCI’s youth coaching competencies. Claros helps users clarify their values, notice what is getting in the way, and move toward what actually matters, rather than just managing symptoms or reacting to stress. Sessions follow a natural arc from opening to action to closing. Each closing conversation includes a specific question about who in the user’s life can provide real human support. That is intentional. Claros is designed to strengthen relationships, not substitute for them.
The safety layer is comprehensive. Claros is trained to recognize both direct and indirect signals of distress across seven clinical categories, including crisis presentation, anxiety and OCD-specific patterns, disordered eating, and substance use. When a safety signal is detected, Claros follows a structured after-safety-response protocol and routes notifications to the right people. For returning users, Claros builds on prior conversations rather than starting from scratch each time.
The Claros Family product gives parents of teens and young adults access to a coaching companion grounded in the research that actually moves the needle. Two frameworks sit at the heart of the Claros Family experience: attachment-based parenting and autonomy-supportive parenting.
Attachment-based strategies help parents understand how the quality of their relationship with their young person shapes everything from emotional regulation to risk-taking behavior to long-term resilience. Claros helps parents identify moments where connection is breaking down, and offers concrete, research-backed approaches for repairing and strengthening the parent-child bond even through the friction of adolescence.
Autonomy-supportive parenting strategies focus on something equally important: raising a young person who can think for themselves. Rather than directing, controlling, or rescuing, autonomy-supportive parents learn to offer choice, acknowledge their young person’s perspective, and build the kind of internal motivation that outlasts any external reward system. This approach is deeply aligned with Self-Determination Theory and with YCI’s core belief that the goal of coaching is a young person who does not need to be coached forever.
Claros Family draws from a library of 32 evidence-based parenting strategies organized across seven categories, also incorporating Positive Discipline, Baumrind’s parenting styles research, Social Learning Theory, and Bioecological Theory. Like the youth version, the Family experience is grounded in YCI’s Care, Connection, and Skills Framework and Reciprocal Potential Theory, and includes the same structured safety layer with clear protocols for when a situation moves beyond what coaching can address.
Have you ever had a client bring a challenge that sits at the edge of your knowledge base? Or known the research exists but couldn’t recall it quickly enough to be useful? Claros for Coaches fills that gap.
The Claros Coach version is an on-demand, evidence-based coaching research assistant. You can input the client issue or challenge you’re navigating, and Claros will draw from behavioral science literature, coaching frameworks, and YCI’s competency model to surface relevant strategies and practical approaches tailored to that client’s specific situation. Claros can then help you think through a full coaching plan.
Claros works through these questions alongside you, acting less like a database and more like a well-read colleague with the literature at their fingertips. It is designed for coaches who take their professional development seriously and want their practice grounded in more than just intuition. Claros does not make clinical decisions or replace your judgment—it sharpens it.
Consent inside Claros is not an afterthought. Clients control what their coaches can access—full transcript sharing, summary-only access, or no sharing at all. Guardians are looped in for minor clients. Every user understands from the start what Claros is and what it is not.
Claros is available at claroscoach.app. Youth and family subscriptions start at $9.99 per month. Coach plans are available at $19.99 per month for individual access, with Practice tier per-seat pricing for coaches serving multiple clients.
This is not AI for the sake of AI. Claros exists because the young people we serve deserve support that shows up when they need it, grounded in the science that actually works. We are proud to bring it to the YCI community, and we cannot wait to hear what you think.
No. Claros is a between-session and accessibility tool, not a substitute for the human relationship at the center of good coaching. For young people working with a certified coach, it supports the work between sessions. For those without access to a coach, it offers evidence-based support as a starting point.
Most AI tools are built to give you answers. Claros is built to strengthen how you think. Every conversation is grounded in YCI’s behavioral science foundation, solution-focused coaching, and the ICF scope of practice. It asks questions because questions are what develop thinking.
Youth and family subscriptions start at $9.99 per month. Individual coach plans are $19.99 per month, with Practice tier per-seat pricing for coaches serving multiple clients.
No. A young person’s conversations are private and structurally inaccessible to parents and coaches. Claros Family gives parents their own separate coaching experience, and the two accounts do not share data.
Claros serves three groups: young people ages 14 to 30, parents and guardians of young people in that range, and certified coaches who hold YCI certification or ICF credentials. Each role has its own private experience within the platform.
Learn more about Claros here.
