Beta
Daily Howdy
A two-minute daily game my mom and I both play, 40 miles apart — a warmer 'still kicking' than a dry text.
At a glance
- A two-minute daily exchange between an adult child and a far-off parent — a warmer proof-of-life than “still here, off to Bingo.”
- Each day you both, on your own time, answer a themed trivia question and play two quick games, then see how you each did.
- An optional note and mood, push reminders, and a shared streak keep the habit alive.
- The daily themes are AI-generated and vetted by an LLM-as-judge, with an admin preview so I can step in when I disagree.
The 40 miles
My mother is 85 and lives 40 miles down the road. That’s too far for a drop-by — and even if it weren’t, I-35 can turn 40 miles into an afternoon.
So we do the thing a lot of families do: we text each other every day, just to say we’re still kicking. It started as emojis and turned into words. From her it’s usually where she and the ladies are headed for lunch, or how Bingo went the night before.
But those texts are dry. And on a busy day, buried under everything else I’m responsible for, I’d forget. I wanted to make the whole thing a little better — for both of us.
What it is
Where I landed is a quick, two-minute experience. Sometime during the day, on our own schedules, we each answer a trivia question and play two small games — all tied together by a theme. If we want, we can send a message through it, the same way we’d send a text. Reminders and a streak keep us honest. And as the adult child, I get to watch for trends in the simple game-play data. A richer proof-of-life, and a better catch-up, than a one-line text.
Under the hood
I built it with Ruby on Rails, with iOS and Android apps in progress, and I generated all of it with AI. AI also writes the themed content inside the product — and to keep that content playable, I run it past an LLM-as-judge that checks the trivia is real and doesn’t do something dumb like give the answer away in the question. What I’m left with is a pool of themes that have been generated and checked. I can preview them on the admin side and step in whenever I disagree.
An honest note
It’s a small idea, but I think it could genuinely help those of us adult children who live just far enough from our aging parents. I haven’t pushed it hard — there are other projects with more upside, or closer to the money. But this one is closer to the heart.