Happy Hearts' Day Fellow Hivers!
It is mid-afternoon on Valentine’s Day and I am sitting here with a heart that is both full and incredibly tired. The commercial noise is building up, red plastic hearts are in the air (probably tomorrow will be in the trash) and the humid heat is back.
If you’ve been following my snail’s pace journey here on Hive, you know I don’t build things quickly. I build them anxiously, usually on an aging laptop that sounds like a small aircraft taking off whenever I write anything. I am consistently guilty of chewing off more than I can eat, digitally speaking.
But today, while the rest of the world is busy with chocolates and red roses, I am pushing something live that feels like a necessity rather than a hobby.
It’s called the Tadhana Test. On the surface, it looks like a simple, fun Valentines Day gimmick. You snap two selfies—you and a partner, or you and a bestie—and an on-device AI scans facial landmarks to give you a "Vibe Match Score" based on structural symmetry. It tells you if you’re a "Dynamic Duo" or "Mirror Souls." It's "kilig" (that Filipino thrill of romance) in digital form.
But if you know me, you know I can’t just build a toy. There has to be an anchor. There has to be a reason why I’m burning electricity on this old machine when funds are dry. We live on shaky ground here. Literally. Between the volcanic alerts and the tectonic tremors that send us reaching for our "Go Bags," we know that stability is a luxury.
I realized recently that relationships are just as unstable as the ground beneath us. Especially for our young people. The emotional tremors of a bad relationship, of not knowing your worth, can be just as devastating as a physical quake.
That’s why the Tadhana Test isn't really about the score.
Beneath the hood, I built it to be a "Green Flag Filter." When the app gives you a result, it doesn't just give you a percentage; it feeds you a piece of advice on what healthy love actually looks like. Things like respecting boundaries, celebrating small wins, and never rushing consent.
It is my small, imperfect attempt at an advocacy tool embedded in a wrapper of fun. It’s meant to spark conversations about safe love, and hopefully, in some tiny way, help prevent teenage pregnancy by empowering youth to recognize their value before they give their hearts away.
Building it wasn't pretty. There were moments yesterday when the server was throwing errors in my face, and I almost just shut the laptop down. I had to rely on some very specific, stripped-down code to make sure it would run on older phones in areas with bad signal (because those are the people who need these tools the most).
It’s not a sleek Silicon Valley app. It’s a lighthouse built with broken glass by a neighbor down the street.
It’s live now. It uses local processing, so your faces never leave your phone (privacy is a non-negotiable for me these days).
If you have a moment today, maybe after your own quiet reflection or a simple meal, give it a try. (Fingers crossed it doesn't crash if too many of you click at once).
You can find it here: https://mdasein.net/tadhana
I’m sharing this with the Hive community because you guys understand what it’s like to build slowly, with limited resources, but with a lot of heart. Thanks for sticking around while I figure this out, baby step by baby step.
Let me know what your "Vibe Score" is in the comments, if you're brave enough to share. Again, Happy Valentines Day!
