Echoes
Voice notes you can search.
The problem
Voice notes are easy to record and difficult to use later. Finding one thought from last week can mean scrubbing through several recordings.
I built Echoes for myself. I wanted a place to talk through ideas while walking and a low-stakes way to learn how transcription and other AI features behaved inside an iOS app.
About
Echoes automatically transcribes each recording, which makes voice notes searchable. I also experimented with asking questions across the notes, such as finding something I had said the previous day.
There's an unfinished feature I still think about: a mind-map view that connects related notes. Record a note about the grocery store one Sunday, record a meal idea ten days later, and Echoes draws the line between them.
Screens
How it works
Record
Talk through an idea, capture meeting notes, or save a thought before it disappears.
Transcribe
Echoes turns the recording into text automatically.
Search
Search the transcript when you need to find something later.
Key decisions
Use it to learn before building a larger product
Echoes was where I learned to add transcription, question answering, and connections between related notes to an app. I later used those patterns while building Ripple's AI pipeline.
Stop before an App Store launch
Once Echoes solved my problem and answered the technical questions I had, polishing it for a public launch was no longer the best use of my time. I kept it in beta and moved on to products with a clearer audience.
Results
- Never shipped, on purpose
- and still used daily by its intended user. The patterns I tested in Echoes later informed Ripple's AI pipeline.