DEV Community: Shay R

AI Is Cool. Emotion Is What Makes People Buy

Shay R — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:34:25 +0000

A few weeks ago, we launched Forevers.app.

The idea is simple: upload a few photos, and AI turns them into emotional cinematic videos.

At first, I thought people would care mostly about the technology.

The model.
The animation.
The transitions.
The video quality.
The speed.

And yes, all of that matters.

But after 150 signups and 7 paying clients, I realized something much more important:

People are not paying because the AI is cool.

They are paying because it makes them feel something.

When someone uploads an old family photo, a wedding picture, a childhood memory, or a photo of someone they miss, it stops being just an image file.

It becomes personal.

Then, when the photo starts moving, when music is added, when it suddenly feels alive, the reaction is completely different from a normal SaaS flow.

People smile.
People get quiet.
Some people get emotional.
And then they share it.

That is the real product loop.

Not just upload → process → download.

It is:

memory → emotion → surprise → sharing.

For me, this is the biggest lesson so far.

AI products should not only ask: “What can we generate?”

They should ask:

“What can we make people feel?”

Because in a world where AI tools are everywhere, technology alone is becoming less impressive.

The real moat is not only the model.

It is the moment.

Forevers.app is still early, but the first signs are strong. 150 signups and 7 paying clients showed me that emotional SaaS is not just a nice idea.

Forevers.app

It can convert.

And maybe the next generation of AI products will not win because they are the smartest.

Maybe they will win because they feel the most human.

ai #saas #startup #product

Building Forevers.app: Turning Still Memories Into AI Generated Videos

Shay R — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:31:47 +0000

When we started building Forevers.app, the idea sounded simple:

Take still photos, arrange them into a meaningful story, and turn them into a cinematic AI generated video.

In reality, it became one of the most technically challenging and exciting products we have built.

Forevers.app is an AI video generation platform that helps people bring cherished memories to life. Users upload photos, organize them chronologically, and receive an animated video with transitions, movement, music, and emotional pacing.

Behind that simple experience sits a full stack system involving React, TypeScript, Supabase, Replicate, Mux, Stripe, Remotion, Fabric.js, background jobs, multilingual UI, credit logic, admin tooling, and a lot of edge cases we did not expect at the beginning.

This is a look at what we built, what broke, what worked, and what is coming next.

The product vision

The goal was not just to create another AI tool.

We wanted Forevers.app to feel personal.

Most people have hundreds or thousands of photos sitting on their phone or cloud storage. Some are from family events, memorials, weddings, birthdays, travel, childhood moments, or loved ones they want to remember.

The problem is that photos are static. They are meaningful, but they do not always feel alive.

Forevers.app turns those images into short cinematic videos using AI powered animation and transitions. The user does not need editing skills, timeline knowledge, video software, or prompt engineering.

Upload photos. Arrange them. Generate a video.

That is the promise.

The stack we chose

For the frontend, we built with:

React 19
TypeScript
Vite
Tailwind CSS
React Router
TanStack Query
Framer Motion
Fabric.js
Remotion
Radix UI and shadcn/ui

For the backend and infrastructure:

Supabase for auth, database, and edge functions
Replicate for AI model inference
Mux for video hosting and delivery
Stripe for payments and credits
Supabase Storage for file handling

This stack gave us speed, flexibility, and enough control to build both a consumer friendly product and a strong admin system.

The first big challenge: AI video generation is not one job

At first, it is easy to think video generation means sending one request to an AI model and getting one video back.

That is not how it works.

A full video generation pipeline contains many smaller steps:

Photo upload
Image validation
Ordering and timeline logic
Clip generation
Prediction tracking
Transition generation
Merge processing
Music generation
Audio looping
Muxing
Final delivery
Error recovery
Credit deduction
Admin visibility

Each step can fail independently.

One clip might succeed while another fails. A merge job might timeout. A video might be generated successfully but fail during upload. A user might close the browser halfway through. A payment might succeed while the video pipeline is still running.

So we had to stop thinking about video generation as a single request and start treating it as a state machine.

That changed everything.

What we learned about long running AI jobs

AI jobs are slow, unpredictable, and expensive.

That means the product must be designed around uncertainty.

We had to think carefully about:

When to charge credits
How to show progress
How to retry failed jobs
How to avoid duplicate generations
How to handle partial success
How to expose useful errors to admins
How to prevent users from feeling stuck

The biggest lesson was this:

A good AI product is not only about model quality. It is about job orchestration.

Users care about the final result, but they also care about trust. They need to know something is happening. Admins need to know what went wrong. The system needs to recover gracefully.

That led us to build a more complete admin dashboard with user management, video job monitoring, model probing, credit controls, payment visibility, coupon management, branding configuration, CMS controls, and support tooling.

The frontend challenge: simple UI, complex state

The user interface had to feel simple.

But under the hood, the state was anything but simple.

A project can have many photos. Photos can be reordered. Each photo can become a clip. Each clip can have a prediction state. A project can be draft, processing, failed, partially completed, or completed.

We used TanStack Query heavily for fetching, caching, and keeping the UI responsive. We also used Framer Motion to make interactions feel smooth, especially around project flows and transitions.

Fabric.js helped with canvas manipulation, and Remotion gave us a powerful way to think about rendering and composition.

One important product decision was keeping the core flow focused. It is tempting to add too many editing controls, but most users do not want professional video software. They want a beautiful result quickly.

That became a guiding principle:

Powerful system, simple interface.

The multilingual problem

Forevers.app supports English and Hebrew.

That sounds like a translation task, but it is really a layout task too.

Hebrew means RTL support. Components need to adapt. Spacing, alignment, navigation, font loading, and even emotional tone need to feel natural in both languages.

We built language and font handling into the marketing and product experience so the app can support both LTR and RTL flows.

This was especially important because memory based products are emotional. Bad localization makes the product feel generic. Good localization makes it feel personal.

The payment and credit system

We chose a token based credit system because AI generation has real cost.

Every video generation consumes compute, model usage, storage, and delivery resources. So the business model needed to map clearly to usage.

Stripe handles payment processing, while the app manages credits, coupons, history, and admin controls.

One of the harder parts was aligning payment success with generation state. A user should not lose credits because of a system failure. At the same time, the platform needs protection from duplicate jobs and abuse.

That required careful handling around credit deduction, job creation, retry behavior, and admin recovery tools.

What worked well

The biggest success so far is that the product experience feels understandable.

Users do not need to know what Replicate, Mux, Remotion, or Supabase are. They just see their photos become a video.

That abstraction is the product.

Some wins we are proud of:

The generation pipeline is becoming more reliable
The admin dashboard gives real operational visibility
The UI supports both English and Hebrew
The credit system makes usage transparent
The app is structured around features, not random components
The stack allows us to move quickly without giving up control

From a developer perspective, the modular structure helped a lot. Separating marketing, projects, admin functionality, shared UI, providers, and API logic made the app easier to grow.

What did not work at first

A few things were harder than expected.

Progress tracking was more complicated than expected. Users do not want vague loading screens for long AI jobs.

Error states needed more detail. A failed AI job without context is almost impossible to debug.

Admin tooling had to be built much earlier than expected. Once real users interact with AI pipelines, you need visibility immediately.

Video delivery is its own product layer. Generating a video is only part of the work. Hosting, playback, encoding, and delivery matter just as much.

AI cost control must be designed from the beginning. Every retry, failed job, and duplicate request has business impact.

These lessons shaped the platform heavily.

What is coming next

We are now focused on making Forevers.app faster, smarter, and more flexible.

Better generation quality
More cinematic transition styles
Improved music generation and synchronization
Smarter photo ordering suggestions
More customization without overwhelming the user
Better mobile experience
More advanced admin analytics
Additional language support
Template based video stories
Improved recovery for failed jobs

Long term, the goal is to make Forevers.app the easiest way to turn meaningful photos into emotional AI generated videos.

Not just slideshows.

Actual memory stories.

Final thoughts

Building Forevers.app taught us that AI products are not only about calling a model.

The real work is everything around the model:

The user flow
The job system
The error handling
The payments
The admin tools
The delivery pipeline
The emotional experience

AI makes the magic possible, but product engineering makes it usable.

We are still early, but the results so far are exciting. Seeing static memories turn into moving cinematic videos is genuinely powerful.

That is what keeps us building.

You can try it here:

https://forevers.app

What is a Blockchain masternode? and How you can benefit from it?

Shay R — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 13:10:30 +0000

The Crypto Passive Income Revolution

I like to explore new and innovative investment opportunities. It's always exciting when I discover new, interesting models. I prefer investments that generate passive monthly income. I invest the majority of my crypto funds in bitcoin, and I believe it will be around for a long time to come. However, there are other opportunities in the cryptocurrency world, such as Yieldnodes.

Make sure you read this post if you're a crypto enthusiast or like learning about new investment models. You could find Yieldnodes to be a great path to take. New investment opportunities are constantly emerging as a result of the blockchain economy.

Perhaps you found a DeFi platform or two on your Google searches as well. In my experience, the returns were not so high and consistent.

Master Nodes: What Are They?

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dash's master nodes are parts of the cryptocurrency infrastructure. Regular nodes add transactions to the blockchain, but master nodes do not do so. The blockchain is instead governed by the miners, who verify new blocks.

Masternoding = High Returns = YieldNodes

Even so, there was something intriguing about this master noding thing. We should dig deeper into it. I thoroughly investigated Yieldnodes validity. I investigated the underlying model and examined masternodes. These masternodes generate the revenue behind the platform. We will discuss masternoding in greater detail later. I was attracted to the platform due to its fundamental value proposition as well.

It is possible for anything to happen in the crypto world, and every investment carries a high risk. So, as I had previously stated, consider every crypto investment as high risk, and with a grain of salt.

Yieldnodes is an innovative fund powered by masternodes and staking techniques

What is Yieldnodes?

Using Masternodes, a building block of many cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks, Yieldnodes generates passive income and value. In contrast with many other crypto services, Yieldnodes do not trade but run servers to host different software applications and cryptocurrency projects. Think of it as an impressive long-term node rental program.

You can invest in several crypto projects run by the team, including spawning new masternode servers, supporting a decentralized crypto exchange, and running multiple crypto projects. Each month, the company aggregates the generated revenue from these activities, so we know what to expect.

How much to expect?

Yieldnodes Calculator Based On Last Year Performance, deposit of $5000

The platform makes it easy to deposit and track your funds. Payouts are made every 1st of the month after registration. I've been investing since May 2021, and it has worked so far. Additionally, the team sends out a monthly newsletter with the latest progress and activity.

You can deposit funds in Bitcoin easily, but you can also use 3rd party integrations or a bank wire to deposit in Euros or Dollars. Everything worked as expected when I withdrawn funds to a private address. The investment is now safe.

How does Yieldnodes generate revenue?

Yieldnodes began offering master node rental in late 2019. Many crypto coins use Masternodes as building blocks. As a mining node, it adds blocks to the blockchain. In a network, a masternode is a server. It receives fees for every transaction.

Masternodes validate transactions. The Proof-of-Stake method is more energy-efficient than Proof-of-Work in Bitcoin. Proof of stake, used by many other coins, relies on validators or master nodes.

Creating a masternode requires locking funds. In other words, locked coins are a showing of dedication to the network, which pays in the form of fees and monthly profits. Today, many coins use this mechanism.

How To Make Money From A Node Rental Program?

Yieldnodes will use your money and deposits to fund and spawn more masternodes for their node rental program and other services they operate. Nearly 4000 masternodes power Yieldnodes. Moreover, master nodes require locked coins, which your investment helps secure.

The team generates coins in several chains using computing power. Investors in Yield nodes rent servers participate in a decentralized blockchain.

Building trust in yieldnodes

Investing in cryptocurrency is definitely a risk, especially if you want to avoid frauds and scams. People who gave money to the wrong people are regularly featured on social media. So before investing in Yieldnodes, I ensured through my preliminary Yieldnodes review journey that they were transparent and honest with me.

As you can see, Yieldnodes has an expert team of blockchain technology and masternode experts, who have worked on this project for the last two years. Transparency and approachability are important to me. Creating a community of crypto enthusiast's who stay on platform long-term, enjoying compounding rate.

My findings on Yieldnodes

Assessing Risks vs. Rewards

Why should I invest in Yieldnodes?

The monthly return is around 10%. It's a great passive income source that you won't find anywhere else.
It is possible to compound your investments more than three times a year.
Bitcoin/USD exchange rates do not affect revenue. Thus, monthly returns remain steady even when rates dip.
The team is transparent, provides information about the platform through a monthly newsletter, is approachable through support, and there are many positive comments over the web.
Only the compounded rate needs to be adjusted.
KYC (Know Your Customer) is required.
It only takes 250 euros as minimum deposit.

Do Yieldnodes have any cons?

You don't control the custody of your money when you invest in cryptocurrencies. Once the cryptocurrency has left your wallet, you are exposed to risk.
Yieldnodes is currently not regulated by any government agency.
As opposed to Bitcoin and Ethereum, Masternoding makes money from Altcoins.
Euros are used instead of Bitcoins. As a result, the yield depends on your Euro deposit.
Yieldnodes lock your invested funds for 6 months after every deposit. Profits are withdrawn monthly. If you deposit 10K Euro, they're locked for six months. The money deposited back (and closed for six months) or withdrawn is approximately 1000 Euros a month.
Cold wallets are the most secure, so whenever you use a third party, you take some risks.

Is it Possible to Invest in Yieldnodes?

Having read this review, understood the risk and reward models of Yieldnodes, and decided how much you want to invest, the process is relatively straightforward. No experience with master nodes required!

How to Invest in Yieldnodes?

Sign up for a Yieldnodes account.
Upload your ID, proof of address, and KYC details, and sign the investment contract.
Turn on Google Authentication under 2FA Settings. Important for safety.
Invest the desired amount of Bitcoin in your member's area.
The platform will invest your money seven days after the transaction settles. Each step will be confirmed by email.
The Withdrawal tab allows you to define how much money will be automatically reinvested every month and the compounding rate. Using compounding, you can make more profits over time.
You get recurring monthly income!

Is it possible to invest in masternodes without Yieldnodes?

It is possible to invest in masternodes without Yieldnodes, all you'd need is a few accounts.
You need to transfer your bitcoins to birake exchange, then on birake you need to buy the coins you want to masternode on ihostmn.

Now, you need to withdraw them from birake to ihostmn into the pool that you have joined on ihostmn.

Hope that makes sense :)
Good luck!