Talkville

Talkville is an iOS app that helps you practice your social skills by role playing scenarios with AI and then getting feedback. The app shows the map of a village, you can tap several buildings and pick one of the villagers at that location. Then you can choose the scenario you want to practice and start chatting. After every conversation you'll receive feedback. There is also a general overview where you get feedback on recurring mistakes you keep making.

The idea for Talkville has been in my mind for years. As someone who always had trouble with small talk I often wished there was a way to practice. And then at some point I thought, well, why not build it myself. The original idea was intented to be a marketplace where people could pay to talk to other people and get feedback. Kinda like tutor sites for languages. But life happened and I never really made it a priority. The idea kept burning in my mind until ChatGPT came out and I realized it would be a lot easier to use AI for practice than try to find actual people to populate a marketplace. But again, life happened and it's only in 2025 that I decided to finally build it.

For now, Talkville is iOS only. I used UIKit because it's what I know best. For the backend I'm using python with FastAPI. Everything is hosted on my own Digital Ocean server. At some point during development I noticed that someone was using my Claude API key. I didn't get how or why it was happening. I thought maybe my server was compromised so I spent some hours locking down Ubuntu more. Until at some point I locked myself out and yet the (new) key was still being used by someone. It was quite stressful actually, I couldn't launch without figuring this out. In the end, turns out I'm just a big noob when it comes to backend and it was possible for everyone to just download the .env file with the key in it. Yeah... :p Problem fixed now.

Besides this, the hardest part wasn't technical but figuring out a decent way to present the different practice scenarios to the user. Usually when I try to figure something out I go for a walk and so there was a lot of walking during the development of Talkville. I'm still not sure yet I have cracked it so we'll see what people say.

I'm glad I finally built the idea that has been on my mind for too many years now. I'm gonna keep improving it and adding features because I really believe it can help many people.

I think Talkville is a good fit for the RevenueCat Peace Prize. There has been a loneliness epidemic among young people. Smartphones have made it harder to practice social skills since everyone is glued to their screens. It has led to a generation who, compared to previous generations, feels more lonelier and has more trouble making new connections. Things like the 'gen z stare' and anxiety about phone calls just didn't exist in the past. So I believe Talkville is definitely good for indiviuals. Improving your social skills will lead to more friendships, deeper connections, will help with dating. It will make young people's live richer. And this in return will be beneficial for society. We should all talk more with each other, connect more and try to understand each other more. My goal is for Talkville to reach enough people that at some point it will be noticeable in the social studies about loneliness etc. I really hope I can help a lot of people.

Built With

• digitalocean
• fastapi
• python
• supabase
• swift