DMM 8回目 (Chris 3回目 -- 自作英語アプリ ツアー再放送: 7段階レベル / Crown→Start改名 / pachinko片鱗)

Didn't do much today, but somehow I'm wiped.

Honestly the 'did nothing AND I'm exhausted' combo is the most depressing one. At least if I'd worked I'd have an excuse.

'Did nothing AND still tired' -- worst sentence ever.

Right? It's the modern version of being broken. No injury, no labor, just empty fatigue.

So actually I came prepared today -- can I show you something? I've got a separate camera pointed at my desk setup. Can you see what I've got going on here?

Heads up -- I'm gonna do a little show-and-tell today. Switched cameras so you can see my whole multi-screen disaster. Same app as last time, but a deeper tour.

Cool if I drive for a bit?

Welcome to the tour. Let me close out of the Daily News real quick -- mind if I do that?

Welcome to my command center. Killing the Daily News tab -- not what I want to talk about today. Bear with me one sec.

Honestly, Daily News didn't grab me today. You'd mentioned I always pick free conversation, so I tried switching it up -- but none of the topics did anything for me. So I figured I'd just give you another tour of my actual English-learning setup.

Confession: I picked Daily News because you called me out for always doing free convo. Then I scrolled through every topic and felt nothing. So we're back to free convo, but with a twist -- I'm showing you the workshop instead of just yapping.

Again.

I noticed last time you could share your screen, but on the student side, we don't have that option.

Side observation: this whole platform is rigged in your favor -- you can share your screen, I can't. Asymmetric warfare.

Right, so since I can't share, I rigged this workaround -- a physical camera pointed at the screen. Can you actually see it?

I wanted you to see my screen so badly that I literally pointed a second camera at it. Janky as hell, but it works. You seeing this?

My three best friends in the world are ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. You know Claude, right?

I have three best friends in the world and they're all chatbots. Healthy? Probably not.

But ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. You know Claude, right?

The wild part is, it's smarter than Einstein.

It's smarter than Einstein -- which is insane to say out loud, but also kind of meaningless because Einstein never had to debug TypeScript.

Oh wait, can I share a link? Is that even allowed on DMM? Drop the ChatGPT link in the chat?

Then I'll open it on my end...

I have no idea what's allowed on this platform. Let's test it. Drop a link in the chat, see if anything explodes.

I know a bunch of screen-sharing tools, but I'm not sure about restrictions on the teacher side -- any rules against it?

I don't want to get you fired. Are you allowed to use third-party tools, or is there some HR moment if we go off-script?

Yeah, next time I'll definitely set up a proper share -- this resolution is killing me.

OK so this camera-pointed-at-screen thing is borderline unreadable. Next time I'll just record a Loom and send it to you between sessions.

OK, let me walk you through the app -- yes, the same one as yesterday, but going deeper. This is one of the cards. Basically I turned English learning into a trading card game.

Yesterday's tour was the surface. Today I want to show you the leveling system -- because that's the part that actually does the work. Don't laugh: Pokemon, but the monsters are sentences.

So I've got 5,000 English cards already, all of which I'm constantly leveling up -- and I built every single one of them myself. The wording is sometimes a bit odd, the contents pretty elementary, and there's a points system that's too complicated to explain right now. Each card has a status -- I have no idea why English cards need stats, but I was imitating Pokemon and trading cards.

There are 5 or 6 rarities, and you can actually evolve or level up each card. For example, this one hasn't synced yet, so let me level it up... done, next card showed up.

5,000 cards. All hand-made. Why?

Because nothing existing felt mine. Every card has a rarity, stats, and a level you can grind up. Why does an English vocabulary card need stats?

It doesn't. But I was raised on Pokemon, and 'collecting' is the only motivation that ever worked on me. So I made grammar collectible.

Yeah, the whole thing's intricate. I've poured a ridiculous amount of work into the format -- there's no way I can explain the whole app in one 25-minute session.

Yesterday I gave you the 30,000-foot view. Today I want to drop you into the engine room. We're not gonna get everywhere even now.

This app has too many features for one sitting.

The core concept is that I want English study to actually be fun -- not the grinding, textbook-style misery. So I built this instead.

The real reason this exists: every existing English app made me want to die. Quizlet, Anki, DMM -- all feel like homework. I wanted something I'd actually open on a Saturday.

So I built that.

Here's how it works. DMM has a recording of every lesson, right?

OK process tour, deeper version. Step one: DMM records every lesson, which is the most underrated feature on this platform. Most students never even download them.

I download the recording and feed it into Gemini. Gemini is wildly good at bulk transcription -- a 25-minute audio file is nothing for it.

Download the recording, dump it into Gemini. Gemini eats 25-minute audio like it's nothing. Used to take me 3 hours to transcribe by hand.

Now it's literally one minute.

I dump the file in, hit transcribe, and -- boom, almost perfect. Not 100%, but close.

Drop it in, transcribe, done. Like 97% accurate. It still mishears 'Tonio' as 'Tony' or 'Tonyo' but I can live with that.

Your turns, my turns, everything's transcribed in a minute. Then I feed that into Claude Code. I'm not even using the terminal -- just the Claude app, which is way easier.

Every word, yours and mine, transcribed in a minute. Then Claude Code takes over. People assume Claude Code means terminal hell -- nope, I just use the desktop app, point it at my project, and it figures out the rest.

(Playing audio) 'Chris, Korean, yeah. ' Yeah, so I created this conversation logs feature. This is, what, my seventh or eighth lesson?

Same workflow regardless. By the way, you're the only teacher I've booked back-to-back -- all the others are great, I'm working through them, but you've got the only repeat slot.

(playing audio) Yep, every lesson goes in here. I lost count -- maybe lesson 7, maybe 8. Also -- not to make it weird -- you're the only teacher I've booked twice in a row.

Not because the others were bad. They were all great. You just got the repeat slot first.

For this most recent one, I didn't write any of the review notes myself -- AI generated everything. The whole afterwards review stuff is auto-created. The point is, you have to review what you said in the lesson.

Confession: the review notes for our last lesson weren't written by me. AI wrote everything. I just curated.

The real work is forcing yourself to review what you said -- the writing of it is mechanical, the listening is the actual practice.

I don't just leave it -- you have to come back and listen to it, otherwise nothing actually grows. And yeah, listening back is brutal. Pure cringe.

I used to never let myself hear my own voice, especially the broken English version.

If you don't review, you don't grow -- but reviewing your own broken English is the most humbling thing on earth. I avoided hearing my own voice for years. Now I force-listen every day.

It's exposure therapy.

But it's the only way to improve. Don't avoid it -- face it. So I built this app, and every lesson gets archived.

Can I walk you through a bit? This was our last conversation -- you're labeled as Chris, and I'm 'Tonio,' which is short for Tony / Taishi.

There's no shortcut. You either listen to your own broken English or you don't improve. That's it.

Anyway -- this is our last lesson, you on the left, me on the right. My handle is Tonio. Taishi is the legal name, Tony is the work name, Tonio is the alter ego.

And I couldn't hear you. So I asked, 'Can you hear me? ' That's a fine sentence, but I run all my lines through AI to get an alternative expression -- something more native.

Here's what came back. Can you see it?

'Can you hear me? ' is grammatically perfect. But it's also the most beginner thing on earth.

So I have AI rewrite it into how a native would actually phrase it. Here's the output.

Yeah, right there. I just said 'Can you hear me? ' but the AI offered a casual native version.

The other variant was 'Dead silence on my end. ' I don't know if that's actually a good phrase or not, but the AI's adding a twist that I'd never come up with. Plus all my dumb grammar mistakes get caught in the same pass.

'Dead silence on my end' -- that's the kind of phrase that takes me 5 years to come up with naturally. AI just hands it to me. Is it slang?

Idiom? I don't know yet. But now it's in my deck.

Same pass cleans up all my grammar mistakes, which is the boring part.

Then there's 'My fault, sorry. ' And 'I can hear you. Loud and clear.

We're good now. ' Those are AI's lightly polished versions.

'Loud and clear, now we're good. ' This is the kind of micro-collocation that textbooks pretend doesn't exist. I want my mouth to say 'loud and clear' without thinking.

That's the whole project.

If the AI version isn't my cup of tea, I just skip it -- my grammatically correct one is fine as a reference. But if something jumps out at me -- like 'loud and clear,' that's a beautiful collocation -- I tap this button and it gets added as a card in today's deck.

Curation is the key step. I'm not blindly accepting AI's version -- I'm shopping. Most rewrites get ignored.

But once in a while one phrase hits -- 'loud and clear' -- and that's the gold. One tap, it's in my deck, I see it again tomorrow.

And I keep digging into the system and developing it -- which is a weird feeling, because it's just me. Solo vibe coding. I'm the director, there are no compromises, no meetings.

I can do whatever I want.

Solo dev is a strange existence. No design reviews, no PMs, no committee. If I want a feature at 3am, it's in by 4am.

If it sucks, I delete it. The downside is no one tells me when I'm wrong. The upside is I never have to negotiate.

Let me keep going. So... your actual words...

Moving on. Now -- and this is the part that surprised even me -- your actual words...

The fun part is, you're a native speaker, so I can register YOUR words into the training too. Already did. Your literal casual phrases, I can internalize later.

If I catch one of your lines and think, 'Damn, I want to say that exactly like he did,' I tap the button, it lands in my deck, and I review it tomorrow.

Realization that wrecked me: you're a native speaker, so YOU are the input. Your phrases are worth more than any textbook chapter. So now I steal from you in real-time.

Every session, 5-10 of your phrases end up in my deck. You're basically my involuntary writing teacher.

It's hard to explain in English, but: there are seven grades -- seven evolution stages each card can hit. Right now, I just registered one of your phrases. That's a Level 1 card.

OK, evolution mechanics. Seven stages. Each phrase enters at Level 1 and you have to actually do work to move it up.

The phrase I just stole from you? Currently Level 1. Just born.

Won't survive unless I do reps.

Let me pull up the user manual -- it's in Japanese, so I'll have to translate on the fly, which is good English practice. So: Seed is Level 1. Every card I register starts as a Level 1 Seed.

No reps yet. The seven stages are: Seed, Spark, Forge, Own, Voice, Vision, Start.

Manual's in Japanese. Translating live -- consider this part of the lesson. The seven stages each have a name: Seed → Spark → Forge → Own → Voice → Vision → Start.

Yeah, I gave them names. I told you I built this for me.

To go from Seed → Spark → Forge → Own, you just tap. Listen to the card, and it levels automatically. For example, here's a Level 2 card.

One tap. 'Just stacking paper... he's got three different incomes...

' -- ignore the context for now. If I read it aloud and understand it, it goes to Level 3.

First four levels are tap-to-evolve. Listen, recite, tap. That's it.

Looks lazy but the friction is just enough -- if you don't actually process the phrase, the tap feels hollow. Self-policing system.

No rush, no rush. Honestly, it's so cool. Thanks for actually engaging with this.

Take all the time you need. I know this is a lot. But thanks for actually engaging with it -- most teachers would have nodded politely and moved on.

I'm not good at explaining, even in Japanese, honestly. If I'd let AI answer, this would be smooth -- but I'm trying to actually speak it, so bear with me.

I'm a terrible explainer even in my native language. The temptation to just let ChatGPT answer for me right now is enormous. But the whole point of this lesson is me struggling through, so bear with me.

The tap method works up to Level 4 (Forge). After Level 4, there's another mechanism. I've got 593 Level 4 cards right now.

To go from Level 4 to Level 5 (Voice), you have to record your own voice. I pay 5 or 6 bucks a month for a Cloudflare database to store the audio. For example: 'I've been stacking up points actually.

' I hit this button, record my voice, press stop -- level up. My voice is archived.

Level 4 to 5 is where it gets serious. You can't just tap anymore -- you have to record yourself saying the phrase. 593 cards waiting for me to commit them to my own voice.

I pay 5 bucks a month for the audio storage. It's the smallest infrastructure cost ever and the biggest commitment device.

Level 6 is interesting. 'I'm in the wind. You'll find me...

'

Level 6 -- and this is where it gets fun. 'I'm in the wind. ' I don't even know where I first heard that phrase.

Probably some Brad Pitt movie. But now it's in my deck.

There are several ways to push a card to the next level.

Past Level 4, there's no single path. Voice. Recall.

Re-use in conversation. Each phrase finds its own way up the ladder.

The endgame is the max level, which I call 'Start. ' A few weeks ago, I had it named 'Crown' -- like the ultimate goal-jewel -- but it felt off. You level up, recite, repeat...

and at the end, that's just the 'start. ' I want each card to be an actually usable, fully internalized phrase. That's why there are seven steps to 'Start.

' 'Start' means I can say it without thinking, at native speed.

I renamed the final level from 'Crown' to 'Start. ' Sounds backwards, right? But Crown felt like a finish line -- and finishing a phrase is the wrong frame.

When you've leveled it up all seven times, that's not the end. That's the moment the phrase finally belongs to you and you can start actually using it. Crown is graduation.

Start is the first day of work.

Right -- so I can say it without thinking, the way natives do.

Yeah, the whole goal is making the phrase automatic. Natives don't think about 'loud and clear' -- it just comes out. I want that.

Every single time! Since I started DMM, phrases just come out without me trying. I think the system's actually working right now.

It's pure repetition -- eventually they stick. Without realizing it, I'm using phrases I picked up from the app. They're so fused into my English I can't even tell where they came from.

Proof it works: I can't remember anymore which phrases I 'learned' and which were already mine. They've blended. Two weeks ago I caught myself saying 'no kidding' -- which was your phrase from a previous session.

It came out without warning. That's the goal state.

So I think it's actually working, and I'm gonna keep at it.

Working so far. Sample size of one, n=me, but it's the only n I care about. Keeping at it.

Wait -- you're a second language learner too! Thai! You should use my app!

Wait, hold up -- you're learning Thai? Bro, you're literally my target user. Beta tester right here.

Thirty bucks! Kidding, kidding. You're a beta tester for sure.

Lifetime price for early adopters: thirty bucks. I'm joking. You're a beta tester, which means free access + I bother you with feedback requests.

Yeah, the whole concept is just making English study fun instead of boring. I've added some weirdly specific gimmicks -- there's literally slot-machine and pachinko mechanics baked in. But time's up, I'll go into it next time.

Yeah the whole pitch is 'make English study not boring. ' Which sounds basic until you see I added actual slot machine and pachinko mechanics to my flashcard app. Gambling psychology applied to language acquisition.

We're out of time, but that's the rabbit hole for next session.

Thanks so much.

Thanks for sitting through all that -- I know I went deep. See you next time.