Fabling: Spanish and French stories written to the words you already know
I've been building Fabling, a reading app for Spanish and French.
Most learner text is either too easy or a wall of unknown words. Fabling writes you a story where you already know almost every word on the page. A few are new, so you can guess them from the rest instead of stopping every line.
Audio sits on the same line as the text. Tap a word for a gloss without leaving the story. Those lookups fill a review deck, so leftover words come back later instead of dumping 500 cards on you on day one. After a story, it names a grammar pattern from lines you just read.
Private beta waitlist: https://fabling.app
I've been hanging around here for a bit first. Curious whether this is a worse idea than just watching a lot of YouTube.
This is a really interesting approach to language learning. The idea of generating stories around the vocabulary someone already knows feels much more natural than throwing learners into content that's either too simple or completely overwhelming.
I especially like that new words are introduced gradually and then automatically become part of a review deck. The combination of contextual learning, audio, and spaced review could make the experience much more engaging than traditional flashcard apps.
And honestly, I don't think it's competing directly with YouTube. YouTube is great for immersion, but Fabling offers something much more personalized and structured.
Definitely an idea I'd be interested in trying. Good luck with the private beta!
thanks — yeah the bet is a story you can actually finish because you already know almost every word. youtube is still great for hours; this is for when you want a page that matches where you sit. waitlist’s open if you want a look: https://fabling.app
Excellent
yeah, youtube wins on hours. the bet is a story you can actually follow, with only a few new words, is hours you'll finish instead of hours you'll skip. stories finished per active user per week is the number i'd watch in beta, not signups. a post-story comprehension percent feels easy to turn into another quiz, so i'd rather just show whether they start the next one.
On "is this worse than just watching a lot of YouTube": for input-based learning the honest answer is that YouTube wins on volume and loses on level. The reason graded/narrow-vocabulary reading works is that comprehensible input at ~95-98% known words is what lets you infer the rest; unfiltered native video is usually well below that for a beginner, so people watch for an hour and acquire very little while feeling productive. Your wedge isn't "better than video," it's "the only text at my exact level, generated on demand" — that's genuinely hard to get otherwise, since published graded readers stop at a handful of fixed levels and you run out.
Where I'd be careful: the thing that kills reading apps isn't quality, it's that the learner has to decide to read. Video doesn't ask for that. So the metric I'd instrument in the beta is stories finished per active user per week, not signups or words glossed — and I'd look at whether a session ends at the end of a story (good) or mid-story (your text drifted above their level).
One concrete suggestion: since you already know their known-word set, show the learner the comprehension number for the story they just read ("you knew 96% of these words, 7 new"). It makes the invisible mechanism visible, which is both motivation and your differentiator in one line. It also gives you a dial to test: does retention peak at 2 new words per page or 10?
To aryan's question, I'd bet the tailored story acquires and the review loop retains, and mixing them in one metric will hide both.
yeah, “a story at my level, on demand” is the wedge i’d lead with too. stories finished per active user per week is the number i actually care about measuring. a post-story comprehension score feels easy to game or to turn into another quiz, so i’d rather watch whether they start the next story. acquire vs retain split makes sense: story does the acquiring, deck only keeps the leftovers from disappearing.
The personalization is the interesting part.
Do learners come back more for the tailored stories, or for the built-in review loop?
a bit of both, but the tailored story gets them over the hump. the review loop is there to keep the few new words from disappearing. i’m still watching whether that actually beats just reading or watching more stuff.
That’s a useful distinction. I’d be most interested in whether the tailored story is also what brings people back, or whether the review loop eventually becomes the reason they return.
i’d bet the story is what brings them back in week one, and the review loop only matters if they actually felt those leftover words in a story they liked. if the deck becomes the product, i’ve probably failed. i don’t have return data yet, so that’s a guess i’ll have to measure.
That’s an important distinction — especially the risk of the review loop becoming the product instead of supporting the story experience. I’d be interested in digging into that tradeoff a bit more privately. What’s the best email to reach you on?
fablingapp@gmail.com — happy to dig into the story vs review tradeoff there.
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.