Pause: Your AI Compass

When everything gets a bit too much...pause.

Comment

Pause: Your AI Compass

Inspiration

Coaching works. But most people never experience it. It's expensive, time-intensive, and reserved for those who already have advantages. This app is designed to change that by making coaching feel accessible, immediate, and human.

What it does

Pause is a voice-first AI coaching app. You speak, it listens, and it helps you make sense of what's going on across your career, family, finances, and health.

Five specialized agents work together: one to understand your life, and four coaches to help you take action. The agents remember you. They diligently take session notes, make tasks, and persist context, so you never have to re-explain yourself.

The entire experience is hands-free. Tasks appear in real time as you talk, then sync to a Focus view organized by deadline. Tick them off as you go. Remember, your AI coaches are always watching and will be holding you accountable to ticking off those tasks!

How I built it

Native iOS app with a real-time voice AI backend. Designed the UI to be minimal and intentional with a premium feel and minimal clutter.

Each agent was trained through simulated conversations and iterative evaluation to ensure they coach rather than just advise.

Challenges I ran into

Making AI feel like coaching. Early versions gave advice quickly without digging deep. That's not coaching. Often, most of the coaching is done when a user thinks through and explains their problem to someone else. They often just need to be asked the right question at the right time. I trained the agents to behave like coaches, not like scribes.

Balancing speed and depth. Voice AI needs to be fast. But coaching needs space to breathe and agents need time to think. Providing incremental UI updates from the agent as it thinks helps keep the experience fluid. Transcripts are too verbose. Summaries are much more focussed.

Building alone. Design, backend, iOS, voice AI, app store connect complications - all solo! The hardest part wasn't any single skill. It was context-switching between all of them while shipping.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

  • Voice-first experience that feels slick and honestly has helped me reach this deadline in 1 week!
  • Designing a framework where agents can be trained by other agents based on human, non-technical input
  • Real-time task generation that appears as you speak
  • Persistent memory across sessions-the app knows your story
  • Positive feedback from 2 early beta testers!

What I learned

Trust is earned in seconds. If users don't feel value immediately, they're gone. The first 10 seconds matter more than the next 10 minutes. Having a "wow" moment early on feels so important for conversion.

Voice changes everything. Speaking is faster than typing, more natural than tapping. A voice-first experience removes friction. This is exactly what busy professionals in Simon's demographic need.

What's next for Pause: Your AI Compass

  • Ship early and get feedback from the users who will shape the app's direction.
  • Notifications (coaches can give a friendly nudge to users to keep on top of their tasks).
  • Partnerships with human coaches to create custom AI coaching experiences based on their frameworks. Experiment with in-app purchases for "human-verified agents" - premium agents that have been designed and battle-tested by humans
  • Paywall testing to find optimal conversion points both regionally and at different parts of the funnel.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates