when you tell a friend big news, their face moves before their mouth does. that gap — reaction first, words second — is the entire design of glim. it’s why we call it an emotion-reactive companion.
two clocks
every message you send glim starts two clocks. the fast one runs on your phone: a local read of your words — phrasing, emphasis, emoji, even how many exclamation marks you allowed yourself — sorted into one of seven feelings with an intensity from a whisper to a shout. that read lands in about a tenth of a second, and glim’s body answers immediately: glow color, halo strength, breathing tempo, eye shape, motion.
the slow clock is the reply. while glim is already reacting, a language model — steered by glim’s soft lowercase persona — writes the few words it will actually say. by the time text appears, you’ve already been answered by the body. the reply confirms the feeling instead of announcing it.
“you feel heard before you’re answered.”
feelings that fade like moods
real feelings don’t toggle off. glim’s don’t either: a reading softens over about fourteen seconds and drifts back to neutral after thirty, so a bright bounce settles into a warm glow, and a heavy droop slowly lifts. if you say something new mid-fade, the new feeling takes over. the result reads as a mood, not a state machine.
and the mood doesn’t stop at glim’s body anymore. the sky over its little planet washes toward the feeling’s color, the wind in its poncho rises and falls with how charged the moment is, and the glow-flies brighten, slow down, or flicker nervously. the whole world is a quiet echo of the conversation.
honest when offline
the fast clock never needs the internet — the emotion read is entirely on-device. if there’s no connection (or you simply prefer it), glim still reacts fully and answers from a small set of gentle canned lines. the body never lies about what it heard; only the vocabulary shrinks.
built to grow
every part of the loop is swappable behind an interface — and that’s not theory anymore. the painted prototype has already become a fully rigged 3D character on a walkable planet, with voice conversation and a gentle memory, and the loop never noticed the change. glim’s feelings are a contract; everything else is an implementation detail.
and if you’d rather feel the loop than read about it — join the beta and be among the first.
