Every friend group already has the jokes, the characters and the cliffhangers. They are buried in a chat nobody scrolls back through. We turn each week of a group chat into a two minute animated sitcom, so friends spread across cities get a shared Sunday ritual that keeps them close.
2. Why people can't resist it
You are the star. Seeing yourself as a cartoon character with a title like "The Mystery Box" is the most clickable thing on earth. Everyone watches to see how they were cast.
Being seen by friends. Inside jokes become canon. The episode proves the group noticed your 40 voice notes, and that it loves you anyway.
Appointment viewing. A season arc ("Will the Lisbon trip happen?") and a weekly drop create a cliffhanger only your group can resolve, by talking more in the chat.
3. How it works for real
Import. A WhatsApp, Telegram or iMessage export file, or a bot added to the group (Telegram and Discord bots are easiest; WhatsApp via export first). Parse on device when possible.
Mine. A fast cheap model (Gemini Flash or DeepSeek via OpenRouter) computes stats, clusters messages into storylines and scores drama. Regex does the counting: messages, voice notes, questions, gaps.
Write. A frontier model (Claude or GPT) writes the cold open, A plot, B plot, twist and end tag in the chosen tone, with a roast level and a banned list per member.
Draw. An image model renders each friend from a fixed style sheet (face shape, hair, palette seeded from a name hash) so characters stay consistent across episodes.
Animate. Free tier: animated still panels with lip flap and camera moves, done in the client or with ffmpeg. HD tier: a video model (Seedance Lite, Wan or Veo 3.1 Lite) renders 8 short shots from keyframes.
Voice. A TTS model gives each character a distinct voice. Members can record a 10 second sample to voice themselves.
Assemble. ffmpeg stitches shots, subtitles, laugh track and music, then the bot posts the episode back into the group.
4. Cost per episode
Stats and storyline mining (cheap model)
$0.002
Script (frontier model, ~6k tokens)
$0.03
Animated panels + TTS (free tier)
~$0.05 total
HD video, 8 shots of 5 to 8 s
$3 to $8
Pro: HD weekly + specials
$4.99 / month per group
Free: one panel episode a week. Pro is split across members, so five friends pay about $1 each. Specials (Birthday, Wedding Roast, Year in Review) are one-off purchases.
5. Growth loop
Every episode is delivered to N friends at once, and each one is an invite: to vote on awards, see their own card or opt in, they open the app. Members bring the show into their other groups ("do this for my family chat"). Crossover episodes, where two groups share a member, pull a whole new group in at once.
6. Risks and guardrails
Consent per member. Everyone gets a request. Anyone can opt out and becomes an unnamed off-screen voice.
Never cruel. A roast slider (Gentle, Cheeky, Spicy) and hard rules: no health, money, exes, bodies or secrets, ever.
Privacy. Chat deleted after processing. Only the script and stats are kept. Nothing is public unless the whole group opts in.
Likeness. No real faces unless each person uploads their own. Cartoon only by default.
7. MVP build order (this week)
WhatsApp export parser and stats page (this demo's parser is a working start).
Cast generator: SVG avatars from name hash plus archetypes from stats.
Script writer prompt with tones, roast level and the 8 scene template.
Panel player: still scenes, lip flap, TTS, subtitles, export to MP4 with ffmpeg.
Telegram bot that drops the episode in the group with a vote button.