Manifesto

Most English-learning apps are built like casinos. They are bright, loud, and engineered to keep you tapping. They make you feel guilty when you skip a day and triumphant when you don't. They confuse time spent with learning, because time spent is what their charts measure.

We don't want to build that. So here is what Spikdi is for, and what it is against.

We believe

1. Learning a language is a quiet thing.

It happens in the small minutes before bed, on a slow bus, in a coffee shop where you don't know anyone. It doesn't need a confetti animation. It needs a comfortable place to sit.

2. The Vietnamese line is not cheating.

For years, language apps have treated translation as failure — as if seeing your own language is a crutch. We disagree. The Vietnamese line is what lets you read English at the end of a long day, when your brain is too tired to puzzle. We put it underneath every line. Read both, or only one. We won't grade you on which.

3. Speaking should be optional.

Some nights, you want to read silently. Some nights, you want to whisper. Some nights, you want to record yourself reading the whole thing out loud and see how your pronunciation lands. All three are real practice. The microphone is a button, not a requirement.

4. Scoring should be honest, not flattering.

When you ask for a score, you get a real one. Pronunciation, fluency, accuracy, pace — measured by the same model, no curve. We will not inflate a 60 to a 75 to make you feel good. People who are learning know when they are being lied to.

5. Lessons should sound like a person, not a textbook.

Every lesson on Spikdi is written or curated to feel like a small piece of writing — a fragment of a letter, a notebook entry, a thought on the way home. Even the AI-generated ones are tuned to that voice. Textbook English is what got most of us through school and made us afraid to speak.

We refuse

• No streaks. A streak counter is a small daily threat. We will never build one.
• No leaderboards. Your English is not in a race with your cousin's English.
• No push notifications that pretend to be people. No "your AI tutor misses you!". If we send a notification at all, it is because you asked us to remind you at a time you chose.
• No ads. Not ever. The moment we sell your attention to a third party, the whole thing breaks.
• No selling your voice. Your recordings are yours. We do not train models on them, sell them, or share them with anyone outside the small team that builds Spikdi.

If we ever break one of these promises

You can hold us to this. Email us, screenshot it, post it publicly. This page is not a marketing flourish. It is a contract.

— The Spikdi team
Saigon, 2026