Once Upon

Inspiration

Once Upon was born out of a simple yet meaningful experience—reading stories to my nephew. Every night, he’d eagerly ask for a new adventure, and his curiosity didn’t stop there. He was fascinated by AI tools, always asking how they worked and if they could create something magical. That curiosity sparked an idea: what if kids could use AI to craft their own stories effortlessly?

What it does

Once Upon is an interactive storytelling platform that makes AI-driven creativity accessible and fun for kids. While AI can be complex, we simplify the experience with an on-rails prompt builder, guiding young storytellers through intuitive character, setting, and plot choices to generate their own unique stories.

To bring each story to life, Once Upon automatically generates illustrations that match the narrative, creating a fully immersive visual experience. But the magic doesn’t stop there—leveraging ElevenLabs’ advanced voice synthesis, the platform reads stories aloud with expressive, dynamic narration, making every adventure feel like a professional audiobook.

By blending AI, audio, and illustration, Once Upon transforms storytelling into an engaging, accessible, and endlessly creative experience for kids everywhere.

How we built it

From the start, we wanted Once Upon to be intuitive, immersive, and fun for kids to use. To bring this vision to life, we began by prototyping in Figma, designing a seamless, guided storytelling experience. This allowed us to refine the user flow—making sure the on-rails prompt builder felt natural, the UI was engaging, and the process of creating stories remained frictionless.

Once the concept was solid, we went straight to Lovable.dev to build it. By leveraging Lovable’s AI-driven development tools, we rapidly transformed our designs into a working prototype, integrating automatic image generation for visual storytelling and ElevenLabs’ voice synthesis for dynamic narration. This approach let us iterate quickly, testing how AI-powered storytelling could feel both magical and accessible.

Challenges we ran into

Like any ambitious project, building Once Upon came with its challenges. One of the biggest hurdles was figuring out how to use multiple character voices during audio playback. While ElevenLabs’ voice synthesis made narration sound natural, we wanted to push it further—giving each character their own distinct voice to make the storytelling experience even more immersive. This required experimenting with different methods to assign voices dynamically, ensuring smooth transitions and maintaining an engaging flow.

Another major challenge was starting with very basic development knowledge. While we had a strong product vision and prototyping skills in Figma, translating that into a functioning application meant diving into Lovable.dev and learning how to integrate AI models, manage prompts, and generate structured outputs. Instead of getting stuck, we focused on rapid iteration, using Lovable’s tools to bridge the gap between design and development.

Despite these challenges, we stayed committed to making Once Upon an intuitive and magical experience for kids—proving that even with limited coding experience, the right tools and persistence can bring big ideas to life.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building Once Upon from the ground up has been an exciting journey, and we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished so far. We’ve taken a big idea—an AI-powered, on-rails storytelling experience for kids—and turned it into a fully functional application that not only works but feels magical to use.

We successfully built an intuitive AI prompt system that guides young storytellers through character choices, settings, and plot twists, making AI-driven creativity accessible and fun. Along the way, we integrated automatic image generation to visually bring stories to life and ElevenLabs’ voice synthesis to add expressive narration, making the experience immersive and engaging.

What excites us most is that Once Upon isn’t just a finished product—it’s a foundation. We’ve created something that can be refined, expanded, and improved over time, unlocking even more ways for kids to craft and experience their own stories. Seeing it work, knowing we built this from scratch, and imagining where we can take it next? That’s what we’re most proud of.

What we learned

Building Once Upon was a huge learning experience, and one of the biggest takeaways was how quickly you can go from idea to product with the right tools. We built a fully functional AI storytelling app in around 10 hours, proving that with a clear vision and the right approach, even ambitious projects can come to life fast.

One of the best parts of the process was learning Lovable.dev. It was an incredible platform to work with, allowing us to rapidly prototype, build, and iterate without getting bogged down in complex development workflows. It made integrating AI-powered prompts, dynamic narration, and image generation seamless and intuitive.

We also tackled connecting to Supabase, setting up a backend to store and manage user-generated stories. This was a new experience, but it helped us understand how to manage data effectively while keeping everything lightweight and efficient.

Most importantly, we learned that you don’t need deep technical expertise to build something powerful. By focusing on rapid iteration, problem-solving, and leveraging the right tools, we transformed an idea into something real—and that’s an incredibly valuable lesson for future projects.

What's next for Once Upon

We’ve built a solid foundation, but this is just the beginning! Next, we’re focusing on refinement and expansion, making Once Upon even more engaging, intuitive, and feature-rich.

Here’s what’s on our roadmap:

✅ Further Refinement – Improving the user experience by fine-tuning the on-rails prompt builder, enhancing voice transitions for multi-character narration, and making the AI-generated illustrations even more dynamic.

🔐 User Authentication – Implementing user accounts so kids (or parents) can save their stories, revisit past adventures, and even share them with friends and family.

📚 Story Library & Sharing – Creating a collection of past stories where users can browse, edit, and build upon their favorite tales, turning Once Upon into a living, evolving storytelling platform.

🎭 Expanded AI Voice & Character Personalization – Allowing users to assign specific voices to characters for an even more immersive storytelling experience.

💡 More Interactive Elements – Exploring text-to-animation and other interactive features that can make stories feel even more alive.

We’re excited to keep pushing Once Upon forward, making AI-powered storytelling even more magical and accessible for everyone!