Building Ruxpin.
A voice-first reading companion I designed and built — from the thought I kept losing, to a working prototype in this playground, to an iPhone app in private beta. Four chapters, about three minutes.
The thought you lose.
I read a lot, and I kept losing the best part — not the author’s sentences, mine. The reaction halfway down a page. The connection to something I’d read years earlier. The question I couldn’t answer yet. By the time I’d found a pen, or unlocked my phone and picked a notebook to put it in, it was gone. Highlighting saves the writer’s words; it doesn’t save yours. I wanted to say a thought out loud the second I had it, and have it land somewhere it would still make sense to me a year later.
The smallest thing that could work.
Rather than argue about it, I built the narrowest version that could test the idea: record a thought, get it transcribed, and let an AI reflect it back instead of summarizing it at you. It started here in this playground, next to the half-finished experiments, and it still runs — the original build, nothing cleaned up for this page. That slice answered the only question that mattered early: whether speaking a half-formed thought felt natural enough to do again tomorrow.
Drawing all of it.
A working slice isn’t a product. Before I could tell whether the idea held together, I had to draw the whole thing — about fifteen screens: capture, a library of everything you’ve read, a portrait of you as a reader assembled only from your own entries, and Muse, the part that mirrors a thought back and asks one good question. Most of it didn’t exist yet. Drawing it is how I found out which pieces were load-bearing and which were me being clever.
Drag to pan the board · use a screen’s ⤢ to expand it, or open it full screen.
Your reading, remembered.
Ruxpin is a real iPhone app now, in private beta. Speak a thought mid-page and it keeps it — filed to the book, in your words — whether you’re holding paper, a Kindle, or an audiobook. The portrait it builds comes only from what you actually said. Audio is deleted as soon as it’s transcribed, and none of it trains a model. A free first month, then $5.99 a month, with Family Sharing for up to five more readers, each with their own private record.
See what it remembers.
If you read and keep losing the good part, put your name down. It’s on iPhone, in private beta, and I’m letting readers in a group at a time.
Join the waitlistOr head back to the rest of the playground.