This is a submission for the DEV's Worldwide Show and Tell Challenge Presented by Mux
What I Built
Daily Echo is a private video journaling app where you record 1-minute daily video diaries. It's like having a conversation with your future self. The app helps you track your mood, reflect on your experiences, and create a visual archive of your life that you can revisit anytime.
My Pitch Video
Demo
- Live App: https://dailyecho.varshithvhegde.in/
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GitHub: https://github.com/Varshithvhegde/dailyecho
Varshithvhegde
/
dailyecho
DailyEcho - A beautiful, private video journaling app that lets you record daily video diary entries, track your mood over time, and relive your memories through immersive story modes and interactive visual walls.
🎥 Daily Echo
A beautiful, private video journaling app that lets you record daily video diary entries, track your mood over time, and relive your memories through immersive story modes and interactive visual walls.
✨ Features
🎬 Immersive Story Modes (New!)
- Memory Stories - Watch your entries in a sequential, story-like format similar to social media.
- Auto-Curated Playlists - Choose from "Recent Moments", "Moments of Joy" (happy/excited/grateful), or "Flashback" (random picks from the past).
- Smooth Navigation - Interactive progress bars, auto-advance, and gesture/keyboard support.
🧱 Echo Wall (Mosaic Mode)
- Living Visual History - A dynamic masonry grid of your life in motion.
- Living Video Tiles - Each tile plays a Mux-generated animated GIF preview simultaneously for a "Harry Potter" newspaper effect.
- Interactive Previews - Retro CRT scanline overlays and cinematic hover effects.
📹 Video Recording & Playback
- Mux-powered streaming - Professional-grade video processing and playback with adaptive streaming.
- Mux GIFs…
Testing Credentials:
- Email:
test@gmail.com - Password:
devtest
Detailed Explanation
The Story Behind It
I have a terrible memory. Seriously. Ask me what I did last Tuesday and I'll draw a blank. But I've always been fascinated by the idea of looking back at my life, especially when the end of the year rolls around and everyone's doing their "year in review" thing.
I wanted to create something that would help me remember the small moments - not just the big events, but the everyday stuff. What was I thinking about on a random Wednesday in March? How did I feel when that thing happened at work? What was going through my mind during that phase of my life?
The idea was simple: record a 1-minute video every day. Just sit down, talk to the camera like you're talking to a friend, and capture whatever's on your mind. But I didn't want it to feel like a chore. I wanted it to be something I'd actually look forward to doing.
So I built Daily Echo with features that make revisiting your memories feel magical. The Echo Wall shows all your entries as living video tiles playing simultaneously (like those moving newspapers in Harry Potter). Memory Stories let you watch your entries in sequence, almost like watching a documentary about your own life. And the Time Capsule feature shows you what you were up to exactly one month or one year ago.
It's been incredibly powerful for me personally. There's something about being able to go back and watch yourself from months ago, seeing how you've grown or changed, or just remembering moments you'd completely forgotten.
Technical Highlights
Daily Echo is built with React 18, TypeScript, and Vite on the frontend, with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui for the design. The backend runs on Supabase, handling PostgreSQL database, authentication, and edge functions.
What makes the app special technically:
1. Living Video Previews Everywhere
Every entry card in the timeline shows an animated GIF preview that plays automatically. When you hover over the Echo Wall (our mosaic view), you see all your memories playing at once. It creates this incredible "living history" effect that static thumbnails just can't match.
2. AI-Powered Insights
Using OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini, the app automatically analyzes your video transcripts to generate:
- Two-sentence summaries of each entry
- Emotional sentiment detection
- Personalized daily advice based on what you talked about
- Mood tracking over time
3. Immersive Story Modes
You can watch your entries in different ways:
- Recent Moments: Your latest recordings in sequence
- Moments of Joy: Auto-curated playlist of happy entries
- Flashback: Random picks from your past
Each mode has interactive progress bars, auto-advance, and keyboard controls for a cinematic experience.
4. Gamification That Actually Matters
Achievement badges like "Zen Master" (recorded before 6 AM), "Night Owl" (recorded after 10 PM), and "Weekend Warrior" (weekend recordings) make the habit more engaging. You can track your recording streaks and see your mood variety over time.
Use of Mux
Mux is the heart and soul of Daily Echo. Here's how I'm using it:
1. Professional Video Infrastructure
When you record a video, it goes through Mux's direct upload API. No dealing with complicated encoding pipelines or storage headaches. Mux handles everything: transcoding, optimization, and adaptive streaming. The result? Your videos play smoothly on any device, any connection speed.
2. Automatic Transcription
This was a game-changer. By enabling Mux's transcription feature during upload, I get accurate text transcripts of every video entry automatically. These transcripts power the AI analysis, search functionality, and accessibility features. I didn't have to integrate a separate transcription service or worry about accuracy.
3. Animated GIF Previews
Instead of static thumbnails, every entry shows a living preview using Mux's GIF generation API. You can watch all your memories playing simultaneously in the Echo Wall view. It's like having a magical photo album where every picture moves. Mux generates these GIFs automatically from your video without any extra work on my end.
4. Reliable Streaming with Mux Player
The integrated Mux Player component handles playback with built-in caption support. It just works - no buffering issues, no format compatibility problems, no manual quality switching needed.
5. Webhook Integration
Mux's webhook system notifies my Supabase edge function when videos are ready, when transcripts are available, and if anything goes wrong. This lets me update the UI in real-time and handle the entire video lifecycle automatically.
The developer experience with Mux has been fantastic. The documentation is clear, the API is intuitive, and features like automatic transcription and GIF generation saved me weeks of development time. Instead of building video infrastructure, I could focus on making the journaling experience special.
What really impressed me: I initially thought I'd need separate services for video hosting, transcription, and preview generation. Mux does all of this out of the box, and it scales effortlessly. When a user records their 100th video, it works just as smoothly as their first.
I hope Daily Echo inspires others to start capturing their daily thoughts. Life moves fast, and our memories fade faster. Having a video archive of your own life is like having a superpower - you can literally go back in time and remember who you were and what mattered to you at any moment.
Give it a try with the test credentials above, and maybe start your own daily echo habit!
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