Try Aries AI: https://aries-a.netlify.app (currently desktop browser only)
A week ago I clicked "Publish" on a project called Aries AI — a free AI abacus tutor I'd been building solo from my home in India. I'm in middle school. I taught myself to code. I am eleven years old.
This is what happened next, what I learned, and what I'm doing now. No filter, no startup-bro vibes. Just what really happened.
What Aries AI actually is
For anyone new here: Aries AI is a browser-based AI tutor that teaches kids (and adults) mental arithmetic through the abacus method. It has four modes:
- An interactive visual abacus you click and drag
- Oral practice where the app speaks number sequences out loud and you keep the running total in your head
- Formula lessons covering the three families I learned in my own abacus classes: Big Friends formulas, Small Friends formulas, and Combination formulas
- A conversational AI tutor (powered by OpenAI) that re-explains anything if it doesn't click the first time
The whole thing runs on OpenAI + Supabase + Render + Razorpay + Netlify. Built solo.
How the launch actually went
I posted across about ten platforms in two days — Medium, Dev.to, Hashnode, LinkedIn, Substack, Tumblr, Pinterest, Bluesky, X, and Reddit. I also got the app listed on AlternativeTo and set up a Product Hunt page.
Here's what I learned:
Cross-posting to ten platforms at once is real work. It took me about six hours total, including editing platform-specific versions. People who say "just post everywhere" don't realize how different the platforms are. Dev.to wants the build story. Pinterest wants a visual pin. Reddit will silently ban you if you sound too promotional.
The most engagement came from places I didn't expect. Bluesky and Tumblr — the platforms I almost skipped — got more genuine replies than X or LinkedIn in the first 24 hours. People on the smaller platforms are more likely to actually try your thing.
I shipped a real bug into production. I told everyone the app was "browser-based, no install needed" without realizing how much of my audience would try it on mobile. The app isn't mobile-ready yet. I spent the next day going back to every single post and adding a "desktop browser only" note. Lesson learned: always test on your audience's device, not just your own.
My abacus teacher is going to review it. That feedback is going to be more valuable than anything 1000 random users could tell me. If you're shipping something that requires expertise, getting one expert to look at it is worth a hundred casual testers.
What I actually built (in plain language)
The boring stack story:
- OpenAI powers the AI tutor. The hard part wasn't the model — it was pinning my actual lesson plans into the system prompt so the tutor doesn't drift to generic abacus answers from its training data.
- Supabase handles users, login, and the database. Row-level security took me an evening to figure out, but once it was set, I stopped worrying about auth completely.
- Render runs the backend. Not glamorous. It just works.
- Razorpay for payments because I live in India and UPI is how most users want to pay.
- Netlify for the frontend. Zero-config deploys are a gift.
The non-boring story: every piece of this stack has a generous free tier. I spent under ₹1000 in actual infrastructure costs across multiple months. The hard part wasn't the money. The hard part was sitting alone in front of bugs at 11pm and refusing to give up.
Things I wish someone told me before launch day
Reply to every single comment in the first 48 hours. Reddit's algorithm decides whether your post lives or dies based on early comment activity. I went from a ranked launch post to a buried one because I missed the first few hours.
Your launch is not your launch. The day you click "publish" is the start of a week-long process of replying, fixing, replying again. Block out the time.
People love founders, not products, at this stage. When I added "I'm 11 years old, building from India" to my posts, engagement easily tripled. Not because the product changed — because the story did.
Friends who say they'll share won't. Strangers who say nothing will. It's fine.
Save every kind word someone says. Three days in, I screenshot every nice comment and put them in a folder called
proof. When I'm staring at a bug at midnight, that folder is the thing that keeps me going.
What I'm working on this week
- Mobile support. The single most common feedback was "I tried it on my phone and nothing happened." Building a mobile-friendly version is the top priority.
- Better onboarding for the formula lessons. A few people got lost between Big Friends and Small Friends. I'm rewriting the intro.
- Getting feedback from my actual abacus teacher. Easily the highest-leverage thing I can do.
- Launching my personal site at the kimstudio brand — a portfolio with my projects, games I built, and other things I'm working on.
If you're a kid reading this
If you're 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 — and you're thinking about building something:
- Start the day you have the idea, even if you don't know how.
- The first thing you ship will be embarrassing. Ship it anyway.
- The internet will be kinder than you expect, and crueler in specific ways. Both will happen the first week.
- The "real" developers are not gatekeeping. They were once where you are. Ask them things directly.
- Your age is your superpower, not a weakness. Lead with it.
If you're an adult reading this
Try Aries AI. If you have kids learning the abacus, send them. If you're learning mental math yourself, try the oral practice mode for 15 minutes — it's the closest thing to having a real teacher read numbers to you.
If you teach abacus, mental math, or any math-adjacent subject — please tell me what's wrong with the formula sequencing. I want to learn.
If you've shipped something solo — what did you wish someone told you in week one?
Thanks for reading. Sending this from India.
— Liza, 11
✨ Live app: https://aries-a.netlify.app
