Readily - Language Learning

Inspiration

Language learning is as old as human civilization, yet most modern solutions feel disconnected from how people actually learn languages in real life. As an avid language learner myself, I found that most apps gamify learning but rarely capture the personal, immersive experience that comes from real-world conversations and discovery. I wanted to build something different: not just another learning app, but a set of tools that truly mimic how we encounter and absorb language every day.

What it does

Readily is an all-in-one language learning toolkit designed to make language acquisition feel as real and personal as possible. Here’s what it offers:

1) Mini Stories: Create and read short stories in your target language. You can write your own or let AI generate them, adjusting difficulty and topics as needed.

2) Roleplay Chat: Practice real-life conversations by choosing or inventing scenarios (like ordering food or meeting a friend), and chat with an AI bot that instantly adapts to your chosen language. If you get stuck, the app can suggest ideas or responses.

3) Tap-to-Translate: Tap any word you don’t know in any conversation or story. Instantly see the definition, translation, and part of speech—all in context. The app automatically tracks the words you tap for focused review later.

4) Personalized Drills: Based on the words you tap and the phrases you interact with, Readily generates custom quizzes and practice drills, targeting your actual learning gaps instead of following a rigid, one-size-fits-all curriculum.

5) Real-Time Chat with Friends: Invite friends to chat in any language. Conversations are translated instantly in both directions, so you can practice together even if you speak different native languages.

6) Multilingual Switching: Switch between any supported languages at any time—mid-conversation, mid-story, or even mid-exercise—and the app adapts instantly, translating content and maintaining your learning progress.

7) Dictionary Building: As you learn, Readily automatically builds a personalized dictionary from the words you’ve tapped, so you always have a record of your progress and can revisit tricky vocabulary.

How we built it

Despite joining the Bolt competition very late and only have 1 week to build, I was able to build a secure and beautifully designed app that may take others millions of dollars and years to build. Thanks to Bolt, I was able to design and develop the entire UI in just 3 days, with surprising beauty, and ease of use. I spent the remaining 4 days implementing authentication and database logic using Appwrite, deploying serverless edge functions on Deno Deploy. Because of this competition, I got to learn about integrating RevenueCat for subscriptions, which genuinely surprised me because it takes me 15 minutes to integrate.

Challenges we ran into

My biggest challenge is security. At first, I implemented Supabase but I am not that comfortable with SQL command to enforce security rules and ended up switching to Appwrite for easier granular control. While this is just an MVP, I did my best to ensure users' data is secure at the row level, as well as protecting API routes from potential abuse by implement JWT checker. While I completely understand that this is just a hackathon and a prototype does not necessarily need that level of security, I want to be responsible with my users and want to make a statement that a Bolt app should not only be beautiful and functional, but also trustworthy and safe to use.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a solo dev, when I know that I only have 1 week left for this competition, I took this as a challenge for myself to see how much I can technically build with the right tools. I am very happy that I was able to build a language learning app that can support learning 19 languages (more to come), with a variety of features support every possible use case to make language learning enjoyable for my users.

What we learned

Having experience in UX/UI design and Figma, I was always super doubtful about low code tools like Bolt and thought "Why can't I just design this myself?". I was in for a huge eye opener and so regretted not discovering Bolt earlier. Additionally, this is my first React Native Expo project, so I definitely learnt a lot about mobile development.