ilysm: couples app & widget

Sometimes "I love you" is easy to feel and hard to put into words. ilysm gives couples a small, private place to stay close through the ordinary moments of the day.

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Inspiration

Me and my partner were living together and decided to go to Italy to do Masters. I got into Politecnico di Torino and he got into Universita Degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, which means we would start living around 2 hours apart.

I wanted to create something that would let us know how we feel, how are we doing, etc. on any moment of our daily lives. Texting sometimes can be hard, maybe you don't have the correct words to express how you feel, maybe you don't have time, or cannot focus to text a message, then a bit chatting at the moment, but telling them you love them, or you are excited, or you are missing them with one tap is very easy.

At first, I was thinking this would be a cute app, but nothing extraordinary. But when I finished the first prototype and start using it with my partner, we quickly loved it and also I saw the potential that this does not have to be a long distance relationship app at all, because we also want to tell each other how we feel throughout our daily lives, even if we live together.

What it does

ilysm let's you connect with your partner and then share emotions (called "expressions") such as "love you", "missing you", "excited", "good night", etc. You can also send a quick live photo ("snap") alongside your expression and a message. Your partner both receives a notification and can see your expressions, photos, messages on the app and on the widget. App is iOS only.

How we built it

I used Claude Code and Codex to build the app throughout.

Challenges we ran into

I am from a coding background, so the main challange was creating the materials needed for App Store (basically marketing materials). App supports around 28 languages, which means I had to do lots of Computer Use work with Codex and also manual stuff on Figma. I also draw the logo myself (which heavily inspired by other logos, I love design stuff so I was able to find lots of examples) and prepared the English version of App Store screenshots myself.

Another big challange was making app sound and look "natural" in all supported locales. If you just tell AI to translate the app, it basically takes the English sentences and translate them, does not "localize" them. I gave permission as wide as letting AI change the app's layout depending on app language if necessary to make it more native in on languages. It did a much better job when I said we do not translate but rather "localize".

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

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