Building in Public

There is a quieter, safer way to build a language learning app. You close the doors, spend two years polishing every corner, write a press release, and hope the thing lands. If it doesn't, you paid two years of bills to find out.

We decided not to do that. Word Exchange Plaza is being built in public, in alpha, free, and we're telling everyone who will listen exactly where it's rough. This post explains why — and, more importantly, what that actually means if you step into the plaza today.

What "Alpha" Actually Means Here

The word "alpha" gets used for everything from "the entire product works fine, we're just calling it alpha to seem humble" to "nothing works, please don't click anything." Our alpha sits somewhere near the honest middle.

Here is what does work, today:

• All five languages (Hindi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Norwegian) have beginner-level courses you can actually play.
• Voice-driven, hands-free practice is live: the speech recognition listens, the reaction-time tracking runs, the mastery curve actually adapts.
• The song generator, madlibs mode, custom words, live corrections, 1v1 Elo challenges, and the weekly leaderboards are all shipped and usable.
• You can sign in with Google, play, and come back tomorrow. The core loop is the core loop.

Here is what is still rough:

• Course content is not complete. Each course is beginner-level only and is still being populated. Intermediate levels are not here yet.
• Progress may reset. As we change how items, levels, or mastery are stored, your progress may be wiped without warning. This is a real trade-off and we don't pretend otherwise.
• Translations are imperfect. Some phrases are stiff. Some translations are wrong. Some audio clips sound odd. We know, and we want you to tell us.
• UI rough edges. Some screens are prettier than others. Some buttons do surprising things. Alpha.

If any of that sounds intolerable to you, alpha is not for you — come back in a few months. If it sounds like the ground floor of something you could actually help shape, welcome in.

Why We're Doing It in Public

Language learning is a huge, crowded market. Every app in it has the same problem: the people who made it aren't the people who use it. Once you've tested the tenth vocabulary flashcard system in a row, you stop being able to see what's weird about the eleventh.

Building in public solves that. Every time someone says "this Hindi phrase sounds like a textbook, no actual person says it like that," we get a correction we literally could not have generated ourselves. Every time a player says "I wish I could just add my own ten words from last week's Spanish class," we get a feature direction we'd never have picked out of thin air. And every time someone bounces in the first thirty seconds, we get a brutally honest onboarding review.

Shipping closed-doors means guessing. Shipping in public means listening.

How Feedback Actually Reaches the Code

Feedback is only valuable if it changes something. We have three channels, in rough order of speed:

1. Live Corrections (in-app, fastest). If a translation is wrong or a phrase is stiff, the fastest fix is to submit a correction from inside the game. You earn points, another player or the team reviews it, and the fix ships to everyone. This is the feedback loop we're most proud of — the community literally co-authors the course. Read more about how Live Corrections work.

2. Feature requests and bug reports (email / contact). If something is broken, or you want a new feature, drop us a line. We read all of it. Not everything gets built immediately, but nothing disappears into a void either.

3. The build log (this blog). We'll use this space to post what shipped, what broke, what we're planning next, and what we decided not to do and why. If you want the long-form version of where the plaza is going, this is it.

Grandfather Pricing for Alpha Testers

Now the part nobody likes talking about: we're going to charge money eventually.

We have to. Speech recognition costs real money. Audio generation costs real money. Hosting and databases and the humans who keep the lights on cost real money. "Free forever" is a nice marketing line and a bad business plan, and we'd rather tell you the truth now than spring a paywall on you in a year.

Here's the deal: while we are in alpha, everything is free. Every feature, every language, every round. When we launch v1 and turn on pricing, anyone who was an alpha tester keeps grandfather pricing for life. Whatever we charge at launch — and it will be modest — alpha testers either keep access at that launch price forever, or get a meaningful discount against whatever the standard price becomes. The exact mechanics will be announced well before we ship v1, so nobody is surprised.

The point is simple: if you stick with us while the app is rough, you don't get punished for being early. You get rewarded.

What We're Working On Next

We try to keep the roadmap short and honest. Short-term, we're focused on:

• Filling out beginner content. More items, more phrases, more native-speaker audio in all five languages.
• Starting on intermediate levels. So players who finish the beginner loop have somewhere to go.
• Tightening the hands-free experience. Better speech recognition on noisy streets, better confirmation patterns, better audio prompts so you never have to look at the screen.
• Deeper community features. More ways for players to collaborate, correct, and compete — things like team challenges, friend-only leaderboards, and richer profile pages.
• More languages. Not yet, but soon. The pipeline to add a new language is getting faster every month.

If you want any of these sooner rather than later, the best thing you can do is come play, tell us what's missing, and let us see where you get stuck.

An Honest Invitation

If you've read this far, you're already the kind of person we want at the ground floor. You're willing to use something that isn't perfect, in exchange for a say in what it becomes. You understand that "free during alpha" is an honest trade, not a gimmick. You care enough about actually speaking a language to try a tool that takes your voice seriously.

Step into the plaza. Play a round. Find something wrong. Tell us what it is. Come back tomorrow and see if we fixed it.

That's what building in public means. It only works if you show up.