Daily Story

Have you ever wanted to write a story, but didn't know where to start? Welcome to Daily Story, a social experiment in collaborative creativity.

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Inspiration

After discussing with a friend his writing as a creative outlet, I wanted to build a tool for casual writers or people looking to pick up writing as a hobby - tailored specifically to those who have difficulty thinking of ideas, settling on a singular idea, or don't have the time or energy to write a full story by themselves. This concept enables them to be inspired daily by different themes, work on their writing skills in short sharp bursts, and also collaborate and learn from others' styles.

The use of AI fit perfectly as an infinite source of concepts and also the ability to collate and align storytelling from many different sources. Additionally, the use of AI voice has enabled the daily stories to be immediately formatted as audiobooks - this is inspired by those that find it soothing to fall to sleep to short audio stories.

The daily story was also inspired by other daily games, such as Wordle and Whichyear - short activities that someone could take part in every day, and also have the ability to see their cumulative stats and achievements.

What it does

The concept of Daily Story is simple, it is a platform where the world collaborates on a new short story from scratch, every 24 hours.

At midnight (UTC), it uses AI to generate a unique title, theme and cover image, providing the initial spark of inspiration.

Throughout the day, anyone can visit the site and contribute their part of the story. It allows a 500 characters contribution, so everyone can participate. Every contribution appears instantly for everyone to see. The story literally grows before your eyes.

At the end of the day, an AI reads all the contributions, edits them for flow and coherence, and compiles a final, polished short story. It also generates a full audiobook.

How I built it

I started by defining my tech stack. I am using React and Tailwindcss everyday at work so it was a no brainer to use those as a starting point. For the backend I choose Convex. It is my go to nowadays, I love its simplicity and real-time capabilities.

Once the stack was decided, I brainstormed with Gemini, to come up with a clear plan that I could feed into Bolt incrementally. I did not have designs in mind so I let Bolt creativity roam freely. I was very happy with the initial design but changed the font and some other minor tweaks.

Every time I faced an issue with Bolt, I would open the project in VS Code, for the better syntax highlighting then switch back to Bolt once the issue was resolved. I also used VS Code for tasks where I felt I reached Bolt limitations.

Challenges I ran into

The biggest challenge was time. I started the project only during the last week of the hackathon. The project I was building before was too ambitious and after reaching Bolt context window limit early on I decided to not present that one.

Regarding Bolt, it was challenging to manage dependencies versions, it seems to install outdated or nonexistent versions. I also found that it burns token really quickly as the project grows even for a small project like this.

Last but not least: TIMEZONES I wanted the story to start at midnight (local time) for everybody similar to Wordle but the collaborative factor made that impossible so a fallback to using UTC was the only viable option.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm incredibly proud of building a complete, functional application in less than a week during my free time. The technical highlight for me was the seamless integration of AI, all powered by the Vercel AI SDK and ElevenLabs:

  • Content Moderation: Using Google Gemma to keep contributions safe.
  • Creative Generation: Using Gemini Flash for daily themes, titles, and cover art.
  • Story Compilation: Leveraging Gemini Pro's advanced reasoning to compile the final narrative.
  • Audiobook Generation: Bringing the story to life with ElevenLabs text-to-speech.

What I learned

I learned how important planning is before diving head first into code. I leaned that vibe coding tools such as Bolt are a great starting point to give life to ideas and shape a prototype quickly. I learned how to improve my prompts and see them being more and more efficient. And some basic video editing skills along the way.

What's next for Daily Story

I have a clear vision for where Daily Story could go. The next steps would be to introduce features that deepen engagement and ensure sustainability:

Subscriptions & Security: Using RevenueCat to offer premium tiers (like unlocking multiple contributions) and implementing proper Terms of Service.

Focused Contributions: Allowing users to focus on specific story elements, like a character arc or environmental descriptions.

Enhanced Gamification: Building out a more robust rewards and achievements system.

Private Stories: Giving users the ability to create their own private stories and invite friends to collaborate.

I want Daily Story to be more than just a website; to be a creative engine, a place to prove that collaboration can lead to beautiful, surprising, and truly unique art.

Built With

  • bolt
  • convex
  • elevenlabs
  • gemini
  • netlify
  • react
  • tailwindcss
  • tanstack-router
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