AI companion reveal screen
Chat screen
Companion's profile screen

Inspiration

I always wanted to build an app of my own—something people would want to open every day. I started with something familiar: chatting. Then I wondered how AI could make those conversations feel more personal.

The name laughmi comes from my own experience. When I shared my idea of building an app, people laughed at me. That became part of the motivation. App icon is a laugh emoji, with the eyes that looked like AI. Now, I’ve built a companion that laughs with me.

What it does

laughmi is an AI companion app for adults, available on iOS and Android.

Users create companions with their own appearance and personality, then start talking. Conversations unfold through short message bubbles, with typing indicators and memories that help carry context into later conversations.

The experience centres on everyday moments: sharing dinner plans, celebrating something small, or checking in after a difficult day. Companions can also share AI-generated photos, and users can upload images for their companions to respond to.

laughmi offers a Free tier and laughmi+. Plus includes up to three active companions, a higher daily chat allowance, expanded memory, and photo features with clearly disclosed limits.

How I built it

I built laughmi around a familiar messaging experience, bringing together companion customisation, personalised conversations, memory, and image sharing.

Much of the work focused on how those features feel together: the rhythm of replies, continuity between conversations, and reliable delivery when users leave and return to the app.

RevenueCat powers subscriptions across iOS and Android, connecting purchases to laughmi+ access. Behind the scenes, operational tools help me monitor reliability, manage usage, and keep the service sustainable.

Challenges I ran into

One challenge was making conversation feel natural. Users may send several messages in a row, close the app, and expect a reply later. Making that experience consistent required careful work on background processing, message delivery, and notifications.

Photo sharing brought another challenge: keeping a companion’s words consistent with what the app actually delivers, including when image generation fails.

I also needed to balance an enjoyable Free experience with sustainable AI costs. Clear usage limits and operational visibility help me learn from real behaviour and improve the service responsibly.

Subscription changes needed care too. When Plus expires, additional companions become inactive while their history is preserved, rather than being deleted.

Accomplishments that I’m proud of

I turned an idea into an app that is live on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

I’m proud that laughmi brings together companion creation, conversation, memory, photos, and subscriptions in one working product.

Most personally, I followed through on something I had wanted to do for a long time: build and publish my own app.

What I learned

Building an AI app involves much more than connecting a model to a chat screen. Reliability, privacy, subscription handling, and cost controls all shape the experience.

I also learned to set a launch cutoff. There will always be another feature to add, but releasing the app lets me learn from real users instead of endlessly refining assumptions.

What’s next for laughmi

My immediate priority is understanding how people use laughmi: what makes their first conversation enjoyable, why they return, and where the experience falls short.

The next step is giving companions a voice through expressive voice memos and voice chat. From there, I want to explore companion-generated videos, real-time voice calls, and video calls—while keeping each companion’s personality, voice, and memories consistent across those experiences.

My longer-term ambition is to explore integration with compatible robots, giving a user’s AI companion a physical presence they can interact with beyond the screen.

These ideas will develop in stages, guided by user feedback, technical feasibility, privacy, safety, and cost. The goal remains simple: create an AI companion people enjoy sharing their everyday moments with.## Inspiration