I’ve been building an AI girlfriend / AI companion app as a solo developer for almost 3 months now. It's called secretstars

The original version is a web app where users can swipe through AI characters, match with them, and start chatting. Think of it like a Tinder-style discovery interface, but instead of real people, every profile is an AI character with her own personality, backstory, style, and memory.

A while ago I posted about the web version here. The response was much bigger than I expected: the post got around 59K views, and a lot of people actually tried the app, swiped through characters, signed up, and started chatting.

Shortly, the app's current stats are:

• ~300 organic users signed up
• ~7k swipes made
• ~800 matches happened
• ~20k messages sent
• ~17m average user session

That was encouraging, but it also exposed a problem I didn’t expect to become such a big bottleneck this early: payment processing.

I don’t want to turn this post into a rant about specific providers, because I know this category can be tricky. AI companion apps are still in a weird place for payments, compliance, and platform rules. But the short version is: getting a smooth payment flow working for an AI girlfriend app was harder than building a lot of the actual product 😆

So I decided to run a new experiment:

What if the AI girlfriend app experience worked inside Telegram as a Mini App?

Not as a replacement for the web app yet. More like a test to see whether Telegram can solve some of the friction around onboarding, retention, and payments

Why Telegram Mini App?

Telegram already has a few things that are useful for an AI companion product:

Users don’t need to create a new account from scratch. They already have an identity inside Telegram, so the entry point feels lighter.

The app can feel more native to chat. Since people already use Telegram for conversations, an AI companion inside Telegram feels less like “opening another website” and more like continuing a chat experience.

It also gives me a different way to think about retention. Instead of relying only on email, or users remembering to come back to a website, Telegram already has the messaging layer built in.

And of course, payments are part of the reason I’m testing this. I’m still treating it carefully, but I want to see whether Telegram gives me a more practical path than trying to force the web app into payment flows that may not be friendly to this category.

What the app does

The core idea is still the same:

You open the app, swipe through AI girlfriend profiles, and decide who you want to match with. Each character has a different vibe, appearance, personality, and conversation style.

Some characters are more realistic. Some are more anime-inspired. Some are flirty, some are sweet, some are chaotic, some are more emotional or deep.

When there’s a match, you can start chatting.

The part I care about most is memory. I don’t want the characters to feel like generic chatbots with different profile pictures. The system summarizes conversation history over time, so when a user comes back later, the character can remember the important parts of previous chats.

That memory layer has been one of the biggest things users notice. The experience feels very different when the AI companion actually remembers what you talked about before.

Why I’m doing this as an experiment, not calling it a success

I don’t know yet whether Telegram is the right long-term platform for this.

There are obvious tradeoffs.

A web app gives you more control over branding, SEO, analytics, onboarding, and the full product experience. Telegram gives you less control in some areas, but potentially much less friction in others.

So I identified my experiment as:

• Can a Telegram Mini App improve activation and retention for an AI girlfriend app?
• Will users feel more comfortable chatting inside Telegram compared to a standalone website?
• Can the swipe-to-match mechanic still work well in a Telegram Mini App?
• Does Telegram make the payment and subscription flow easier, or just different?
• Will users treat it like a real companion app, or more like a bot they try once and forget?

These are the questions I’m trying to answer now.

What’s different from CharacterAI, Replika, Candy AI, and Telegram AI girlfriend bots

There are already many AI companion apps: CharacterAI, Replika, Candy AI, and Telegram-based AI girlfriend bots like Lucid Dreams and others.

I’m not trying to say the category is empty. The experiment is about a different discovery experience.

Most AI companion apps make users choose from a list, gallery, or character grid. Secret Stars uses a Tinder-style swipe deck instead: swipe right to like, left to skip, and start chatting after a match.

What I’m tracking

For the Telegram version, I’m looking at:

• How many users open the Mini App and start swiping.
• How many reach a match.
• How many start the first chat.
• How many come back the next day.
• How long the conversations are.
• Whether users prefer the Telegram version or the web version.
• Whether the payment flow creates less drop-off than the web app.

I’m especially interested in the difference between “curiosity traffic” and people who actually come back to continue conversations. In this kind of product, a lot of people will try it once just to see what it is. The real signal is whether they return.

What I’ve learned so far

The main thing I’ve learned is that distribution and payments can be harder than development itself lol

Building the chat system, character memory, swipe UI, matching logic, and onboarding flow is difficult, but it is at least under your control as a developer

Payments are different. You can build a working product and still get stuck because the category is sensitive, unclear, or simply not a good fit for certain processors.

That’s why Telegram is interesting to me. It’s not just another frontend. It may be a different distribution and monetization path for AI companion apps.

I’m not sure yet.

That’s why I’m testing it

What I’m working on next

Right now I’m improving the Telegram Mini App version, adding more AI characters, making the chat memory better, and comparing user behavior between the web app and Telegram.

The goal is not to make the app feel like a generic chatbot. The goal is to make it feel like a lightweight AI companion experience where discovery, matching, and chat all feel natural.

I’ll probably share more numbers once I have enough data to compare both versions properly.

Would love to hear your thoughts

Curious if anyone else here has tested Telegram Mini Apps for consumer apps, AI products, or subscription-based projects.

Did Telegram actually improve conversion or retention for you, or did it mostly just add another platform to maintain?

I made a post 2 days ago in this subreddit that Im looking for a high risk MoR (Merchant Of Records) https://www.reddit.com/r/PaymentProcessing/

from that time I was searching the web and found an adultpay.io
Sent a request and they've sent a "form" to fill (with my personal data)

but I do not see a lot of feedback about that service in the web

wondering, maybe someone was working with them? If so, what you can say about it?

I built Secret Stars - an AI girlfriend app where you swipe to match characters and the AI actually remembers you between sessions. After using it by my own, a few things have started to seem true.

Take the swipe seriously.

The deck isn't a list. Each character has a different personality, a different voice, a different history. If you bulk-swipe right on everyone, the matches don't mean anything when they happen. Pick.

Treat the chat like meeting someone new.

The conversations that go somewhere are the ones where you actually say something. The AI is responsive to what you give it. Give it nothing, you get nothing back.

The memory only works if you come back.

Every 10 messages, the conversation gets summarized and stored. The character will remember things from yesterday - your name, your job, the joke you had. But it only matters if you return. The thing that makes this different from a regular chatbot shows up on day three.

Don't try to break the character.

The personalities are designed to be coherent. If you push hard against the character, you don't get a better conversation, you get a worse one. Same as with people.

Be honest about who you are.

The AI uses what you say to personalize. Tell her nothing real, you'll get generic. Tell her something true, the conversation tilts toward you specifically.

You don't need mature mode for it to be good.

It's still there, behind an opt-in toggle, for users who want it.

There's nothing to win.

No streak, no level, no completion. The point is the conversation. Stop when it feels right. Come back whenever.

If you want to try it: secretstars.chat 

Ask me anything - the numbers, the build, the ethics, the distribution problem, whatever

Open for the feedback 🏄‍♂️

For anyone landing here cold:
Secret Stars is an AI girlfriend app with a swipe-to-match interface and persistent memory. Match an AI character, chat, she remembers you next time.

Last month I posted an update on this thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildinpublic

People had opinions (fair enough). Here are the numbers anyway.

Then vs now

• Then: 269 unique visitors, ~1K pageviews, $0 spent
• Now: ~2K unique visitors, ~7K pageviews, 137 signups, still $0 spent
• 5,438 cards swiped
• 242 matches
• 5,844 messages sent

Let that last number sit. People are sending nearly 6,000 messages a month.

What I shipped based on feedback

1. Daily rewards - bonus messages for coming back. Retention without spam.
2. Email signup - I only had Google OAuth before, which is embarrassing and was killing the funnel.
3. 1 Welcome email - second touchpoint. Most users don't come back on their own because google don't want to index an app yet, so email is doing real work.
4. Opt-in content mode - the rest of the space has been moving toward more restrictions. I went the other way, behind an explicit toggle.

What's working

The no-signup landing was the right call. People swipe before they sign up, which removed the biggest drop-off in the funnel. The match screen - when a character "likes you back" - converts to chat at a rate I genuinely did not expect when I built it. There's something psychological happening there I'm still trying to understand.

What's not working

Organic growth. The SEO blog exists, Google indexes it at glacial pace, and distribution is eating most of my time.

What's next

• Read the retention data from daily rewards over the next few weeks
• Increase characters group
• Keep banging on distribution - honestly open to ideas

If you want to try it: secretstars.chat - start swiping, no signup needed.

Ask me anything - the numbers, the build, the ethics, the distribution problem, whatever 🥂

About a month ago I shared an update on Secret Stars - a swipe-based AI companion app I'm building solo. That post got more traction than I expected, so here's an honest look at what happened next.

The numbers

• Then: 269 unique visitors, ~1K pageviews over 28 days, $0 marketing spend
• Now: ~2K unique visitors, ~7K pageviews, 137 signups, $0 marketing spend
• 5,438 cards swiped
• 242 matches
• 5,844 messages sent

The swipe-first onboarding is doing what I hoped - people land, start swiping, and a real chunk go deep into chat without friction.

What I shipped based on feedback

1. Daily rewards - bonus messages for returning users. Trying to build retention without spammy notifications.
2. Email signup - embarrassingly, I only had Google OAuth before. Users were dropping at that step.
3. Welcome emails - a second touchpoint, since most users don't return organically yet. Email is doing real work.
4. Content mode toggle - let users opt into a different conversation style. Worth its own post on how I thought about the trade-offs.

What's working

The no-signup landing still feels like the right call. Letting people swipe before creating an account removed the biggest drop-off point. The match moment - when a character "likes you back" - converts to chat at a higher rate than I expected when I designed it.

What's not working

Organic growth. SEO blog exists but Google indexes it very slowly. Distribution is the unsolved problem and it's eating most of my time.

What's next

• Watch retention from daily rewards over the next few weeks
• Keep experimenting on distribution - genuinely open to suggestions

If you want to try the AI girlfriend app: secretstars.chat

Happy to answer anything about how it's built, what the numbers actually mean, or how I'm thinking about distribution.