Miruma
A general knowledge app where every topic ends on a question, and every link says why. Product, name, identity, mascot, iOS app, writing API and store listing: designed and coded by the same hand.
The project
Open the dictionary for one word, come out with ten.
Miruma starts from a feeling everyone knows: you look up a word, read its definition, then the definition of another one you didn't know, and close the book with a handful of discoveries you never asked for. The app turns that drift into a product: topics you read in minutes, each one ending on questions.
The opening bet, written in black and white in the brief: general knowledge is the easiest category there is for AI to generate. Content will never be the edge. What can't be copied is the accuracy of the links between topics.
The rule
A link with no “why” is just a “see also”, which is to say nothing.
Trust
Established, debated or legend: the status always shows.
The brief's best example hid a trap. Waterloo, Tambora, the year without a summer, the running machine: the bicycle may have been born from a volcano. Except the Waterloo mud blamed on the volcano is hotly disputed. A seductive, wrong link is more dangerous than no link at all, because it ruins the one thing being sold: trust.
So every connection carries a status, shown to the reader. As soon as it isn't established, a caveat becomes mandatory and says by whom, and why. The rule is checked server side, before any topic reaches the app: the interface shows the nuance, it isn't alone in guaranteeing it.
The identity
A curious brain that only speaks for itself.
The icon fits in one image: a pink brain with big eyes, outlined in lavender on an almost black aubergine. Inside the app, the same character changes pose with the situation: waiting, searching, having an idea, celebrating a perfect score.
One rule holds it: it only shows up where the app speaks for itself, never in the middle of a topic. A piece on soap doesn't need a pink brain to be read. Around it, a pale yellow that fills but never writes, a violet ink, and one pastel per field.
Palette
Typography
The engine
A topic that doesn't exist yet gets written before your eyes.
Every topic ends on questions that lead elsewhere. When the destination is already written, it opens right away. Otherwise the API writes it on the fly and streams it word by word. The first reader waits a few seconds, everyone after finds it ready.
Behind it, guardrails rather than freewheeling generation: a lock so the same topic is never written twice at once, a per-device quota, and embedding-based deduplication that spots a question already answered in other words. One language, one graph: nothing is translated, French and English topics each live their own life.
The store screenshot set: it talks about the reader, not the app. A short title that reads as a thumbnail, a background in the pastel of the field shown, and the mascot opening, then closing, the loop.
statuses per link: established, debated, legend
hues to pick from, light or dark
trophies to earn
languages, one topic graph each
The model
Free stays a real product.
The topic, artwork and word of the day, the quiz and the review: all of it stays free, and ad free. What you pay for is exploration. Following a question to a new topic costs a little energy, refilled every night at midnight, and Miruma Plus makes it unlimited, with the right to ask your own questions on top.
The same restraint for the habit: a streak to keep alive, a noon reminder for those who want one, and a promise written right into the store listing. The less you come, the less we insist.
The scope
- Product, content model and brief
- Name, identity and icon
- Mascot and its poses
- iOS app, light and dark
- Streamed writing API and topic graph
- Quiz, spaced review and trophies
- Miruma Plus subscription
- Store listing, screenshots and copy
Launch
The app is live on the App Store. Android is next.
“Be the one who knows why.”
Miruma · Promise
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