The brief
Some questions are hard to ask anyone: why someone stopped replying, whether a pattern in a relationship is healthy, how to handle a stressful week. Sola is a companion for those moments, a judgment-free conversation that helps people reflect and see a situation more clearly. Its listing covers dating advice, relationship support, spotting red flags, emotional check-ins and everyday life advice.
A conversation, not a loading screen
The core engineering problem in a chat app built on a language model is time. A full reply can take several seconds to generate, and several seconds of a spinner feels like the app has stopped listening. So in Sola, replies stream in word by word as they are generated. The first words appear almost immediately, and people read at the pace the answer arrives.
Streaming changes the interface as much as the networking. The message bubble grows while it renders, the conversation scrolls with it without jumping, and the input stays usable. Getting that to feel calm in SwiftUI is most of the work of a good chat screen.
Replies you can listen to
Not every conversation happens with eyes on the screen. Sola’s replies can be played back as audio, so someone can listen while walking, cooking or lying in the dark. It is a small feature on a list and a large one in use: it turns a text app into something closer to a call with a friend.
Clear about what it is, and what it is not
An app that offers emotional support has to be explicit about its limits. Sola’s listing says plainly that it is not a replacement for professional care: it offers a safe place to talk and reflect, not a diagnosis or treatment. That line matters for the people using it and for App Review, which looks closely at anything that could be read as medical advice.
The same care applies to data. Conversations with a companion are some of the most personal text a phone holds, and any app that sends them to a third-party model has to disclose that and ask first, under guideline 5.1.2(i).
A Pro subscription
Sola earns through a Pro subscription, sold inside the app with Apple’s in-app purchase. A subscription suits a companion: people come back often, and the value is the ongoing conversation rather than any single answer. The rules for presenting it are in our paywall guide.
What we would bring to a project like it
- Stream every reply. Time to the first word matters more than time to the last.
- Offer another way to receive the answer. Audio playback widens when and where the app is used.
- Write the limits into the product. Say what the app is not, in the listing and in the app.
- Treat conversations as sensitive data, with disclosure and consent before anything leaves the device.
- Match the model to the habit. Frequent, ongoing use suits a subscription.
Related: AI app development · On-device AI on iPhone · Subscription app development
