iOS App

muri

Bedtime stories made from your child's words

Your child taps two or three pictures or says them into the microphone and presses the light. Three muris make up a story that exists only once, with your family's first names in it, and read it aloud. Twenty seconds later the screen goes dark. For children aged 2 to 10, on iPhone.

Role · concept, design, app, server, voices, website. With Muriel Buchheim.

Swift 6SwiftUISwiftDataNode.jsExpressSQLiteClaude APIElevenLabs

How a story is made

The story is written while the child is still choosing. A packed opener covers the wait, and the first sounds are fetched before the light is pressed, so a slow connection never shows.

An AI writes every story, and every paragraph is checked before it is heard. The app tells the child so itself the first time. Three characters, the muris Mimi, Chuchu and OmOm, read aloud with their own voices, one model per character chosen by ear. The characters are drawn in code; the mouth follows the sound of the voice.

What leaves the phone

No account, no ads, no chats. The microphone is processed on the phone only. Parents consent before any data leaves the phone; the consent screen names every vendor and country. First names are spoken but never kept on the server. The audio carries an AI mark. Settings sit behind a parent lock.

What I built

iOS: Swift 6, SwiftUI, SwiftData, iOS 18, a widget, 98 tests. Server: Node and Express on a Hetzner box, SQLite, Docker, nginx, certbot. Stories by Claude, checked paragraph by paragraph. Voices by ElevenLabs. Website: one build script, two languages, inline SVG characters that live with the scroll, structured data for search and answer engines, a share picture per language. Pricing from measured unit cost: one story a night in the subscription.

Screens

Who is listening: the child picks who is in the story.

What is in it: two or three pictures, a boat and the moon for example.

Mimi tells: the character speaks, the mouth follows the voice.

For parents: how muri works and what leaves the phone.

Facts

For: children aged 2 to 10, on iPhone
Length: 3, 5, 10 or 15 minutes
Stories: German and English
App languages: German, English, Turkish, Russian, Arabic
Model: first story free, then a subscription in the App Store
Store name: muri - Family Story Teller
Status: TestFlight, App Store launch pending
By: Muriel Buchheim and Orhan Olgar, Berlin