I built an AI palm reader based on 100-year-old books — here's what happened
Hey everyone 👋
I've been fascinated by palmistry for years, but every AI palm reader I tried was just ChatGPT making stuff up. So I built something different.
What is Palmlines?
An AI palm reader that's actually trained on classical sources:
Cheiro's "Palmistry for All" (1916)
Indian Palmistry by Mrs. J.B. Dale (1895)
Not generic LLM guesses. Real palmistry frameworks that have been used for over a century.
How it works
Upload a photo of your palm
AI analyzes the major lines (Heart, Head, Life, Fate)
You get a detailed reading with source citations
The AI doesn't just guess — it references actual passages from these books to explain what it sees.
Why I built this
Every other AI palm reader I tested gave vague, generic answers like "you're a creative person" regardless of the photo. I wanted to build something that would:
Actually analyze the specific lines on YOUR palm
Reference real palmistry knowledge (not made up)
Explain the reasoning behind each interpretation
Tech stack
Next.js (App Router) with SSR
OpenAI Vision API for palm analysis
Vercel deployment
Stripe for payments
Results so far
Launched 3 weeks ago
5 free readings per day (freemium model)
Working on SEO content to target long-tail keywords like "marriage line meaning" and "how to read palm lines"
What I learned
AI + domain expertise > generic AI — Training on specific sources gives much better results than generic prompts
Free tier is essential — People won't pay $1.99 without trying it first
Content is king — My biggest bottleneck is content, not code
Feedback wanted
Would you use this? Why or why not?
Any suggestions for getting traffic without paid ads?
Try it out: palmlines.co
Happy to answer any questions about the tech, the business model, or palmistry in general!
Top comments (1)
I just tried this website. Its analysis surprisingly matches my real situation. I’ve actually been planning to switch jobs lately, and it even predicted that. Seems palmistry does have a certain degree of accuracy.