Posted on Sep 23 Edited on Sep 30 AI-assisted
My name is Lou. I’m 21, based in Nairobi, and eight months ago I didn’t know how to code.
I’d started and abandoned more goals than I can count. Not because I didn’t care, but because nobody was watching. There were no real stakes, and no one to be honest with when I quietly gave up on something.
I kept thinking about why that was. I could tell a friend I was working on something and still let it slide, because they already knew me — my track record, my excuses, my patterns. Admitting failure to someone who already has a picture of you is harder than it sounds. So is admitting it to someone from church, or a coworker, or family. There’s always some version of yourself you’re managing in front of them.
I wondered what accountability would feel like without that. No history, no image to protect, no one who’d remember it next week if you slipped. Just someone else trying to do a hard thing too.
That’s what I ended up building. An anonymous accountability partner app — no real names, no photos, just a nickname and a shared goal. You get matched with someone working on something similar to you, and you check in with each other. If you didn’t do it today, you just say so. There’s nothing to perform.
I built the whole thing myself, learning as I went, with no prior programming background. It’s called Veyl Space.
It hasn’t taken off. Most days it’s just me, checking analytics that don’t move much. But I still think the idea is worth having out in the world, and I wanted to write down why I built it before I second-guess the whole thing.
If any of this resonates — the abandoned goals, the exhausting need to keep up appearances even with people who care about you — I’d be glad to hear about it.
Veyl is live at veyl.space if you want to see the actual result. Happy to answer anything about the stack, the security decisions, or the AI-assisted workflow.