Echotale

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  Book Card

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  Library

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  Me tab

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  Record tab

Inspiration

When I first started building EchoTale, I asked myself—how can AI truly help people in meaningful ways? We already have so much technology around us, but I wanted to find a space where AI could make life a little easier and more human.

One night, after my parents came home from work, which is already about eight at night, they were completely exhausted. Yet, as always, my little sister waited eagerly for her bedtime story. I still remember hearing my parents sigh, saying, “We’re so tired, but we don't want to skip storytime with your little sister.” That moment really stayed with me. It showed me how love often lives in small, daily sacrifices—and how technology could help lighten that load. Maybe, I think, I can create something that preserves that bond while allowing parents to do some "little cheat".

That’s when the idea for EchoTale was born.

What it does

Echotale is an AI-powered reading app that mimics a parent’s voice, allowing children to fall asleep to the familiar warmth of their loved one’s voice. It doesn’t just read stories—it preserves that bond between parent and child, turning technology into comfort and connection

How we built it

Echotale was developed as a cross-platform system combining an iOS app built in SwiftUI and a React web app for administration and testing. On the iOS side, the project is organized under AIReadingApp/, where ContentView.swift manages the main navigation, VoiceRecorderView.swift handles the voice-recording interface, and BookReaderView.swift displays the children’s book library. The ElevenLabs API is integrated through ElevenLabsService.swift to enable realistic voice synthesis, while AudioRecorderManager.swift manages local audio capture and processing. The React web portion (src/) provides supporting components for voice and book management (VoiceRecorder.jsx, BookReader.jsx) and connects to Firebase via firebase.js for data storage and authentication. Additional admin tools and scripts automate uploading and importing sample books from public-domain sources. Together, these components form a seamless system where AI voice cloning, story management, and user interaction are tightly integrated from backend to UI.

Challenges we ran into

One of the main challenges was designing a clean and responsive UI that balanced readability for children with functionality for parents. Another major hurdle was the book upload system—we needed to ensure every story was public domain–licensed and formatted as EPUB files so that chapter navigation would work properly. This required manual curation and file conversion. Additionally, integrating ElevenLabs for AI voice synthesis introduced high API costs, which made it difficult to fully deploy the feature in a public App Store release.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

EchoTale is my first fully developed app that’s ready for release on the App Store, and I’m proud to have built it entirely on my own—from frontend design to backend integration. It represents not only my technical growth but also my ability to turn a personal idea into a complete, functional product. I’m especially proud of the originality behind EchoTales—there’s currently no app on the market that uses AI to mimic a parent’s voice for storytelling in such an emotionally meaningful way.

What we learned

Through this project, I became much more confident working with SwiftUI, especially in structuring navigation, managing state, and designing interactive UI components. I also learned how to configure Firebase security rules to protect user data and manage authentication properly. Overall, building EchoTale deepened my understanding of how to connect frontend design with secure backend systems in a real-world app.

What's next for Echotale

The next step for Echotale is to replace the ElevenLabs API with an open-source AI voice-cloning framework like MyShell. This change will significantly reduce operational costs while keeping the personalized voice feature intact. By integrating MyShell, I aim to make EchoTales more scalable, affordable, and accessible, paving the way for future updates such as multi-language support and personalized story creation.

Built With

• elevenlab
• firebase
• swiftui